Q9 - The commercial news media emphasize

[slimjimsquinn]

I was thrown off correct answer D) because I thought it was partially wrong.

D) Where the commercial news media constitute the dominant source of information public perception of risk does not reflect actual risk.

The text never really makes this qualification (when news media is the dominant source of information) so I eliminated this.

The answer I chose was C) because that seemed to be describing the effect of the news' emphasis on exceptional events.

Help!

[griffin.811]

So the issue with C is that it says "Events over which people generally feel they have no control over (airplane crashes) are generally percieved as more dangerous than those which PEOPLE FEEL THEY CAN AVOID or AVERT (car crashes).

Do we know that people feel they can avoid car crashes? maybe they think like this: "If I was the only driver on the road, I could avoid all accidents, but man there are so many bad drivers on the road. One of them is bound to hit me regardless of how well I drive." There are other issues they may not have control over too: Mechanical failures with car, drunk drivers, unforseen weather issues and so on.

Bottom line we do not know they feel they can avoid car accidents.

I originally thought, well maybe they can take the train! But the same could be said for airplanes. They dont have to fly. So this doesn't help the cause for C either.

While the passage does not explicitly state that commercial news is most popular, I think we can safely assume the news media discussed in the passage is commercial (after all, its the public thats watching it) and maybe more subtle is that fact that the news is the dominant source. We are told "the public" (meaning public in general) watches the news.

Even if we do not interpret this to be the dominant source, there is still the possibility that it may be. I think it would be much harder to disprove the idea of the media being a dominant source than it would be to disprove the issue in C, so D is the better answer.

[pretty_shy96]

I understand why C is incorrect. However, I thought E was the correct answer, because it was giving an example of when the news media will covered cholera more extensively. Can you explain why E is incorrect also, please?

[griffin.811]

I see two issues with E.

1. The stimulus says the media will "emphasize more" these more extravagant events. but E says "cover more extensively". I'm not sure the two are the same. for instance they could cover a car accident very extensively, detailing the car color, model, make, driver age, parties involved, etc... while emphasizing a plane accident more. (maybe they spend a minute on the car accident, but 30 on the plane and just don't go into detail).

2. from the description in E we cant tell which of the 2 is the more extravagant, so how would we know which would be covered more extensively.

[mjacob0511]

9) The media emphasizes exceptional events over more frequent ones which represent a much greater risk. But the public interprets the risk based on the media emphasis... We are looking for something that says, so the public conception of risk is not correct...
(A) Better source? No distinction between print and broadcast.
(B) We don’t know if that’s the cause.
(C) No. They are perceived as more dangerous because they get more media attention.
(D) Perfect. If everyone is getting commercial news, then real risk could be different than perceived risk which is biased by media emphasis.
(E) Why? It probably wouldn’t because it might not be as exceptional as the rare disease. Also, is emphasize the same as cover more extensively? It can be very extensive but not emphasized.

[pbookworm]

I found an issue with E not because of the reasons listed above. E is wrong because they state cholera will be covered more extensively than a rarer, but less serious disease. In the stimulus, airplane crashes were emphasized more than car accidents, which are more frequent and riskier than crashes. Do you see the disconnect?

You can kind of treat analyzing answer choice E with the stimulus as a parallel reasoning question.

Emphasize is tantamount to "more extensively", that is not the reason it is incorrect!

[BarryM800]

I eliminated (D) because the language is too strong - "public perception of risk DOES NOT reflect actual risk (which is a 'all' statement)," whereas in the stimulus we are told the public TENDS TO interpret the degree of emphasis as indicating the degree of risk, which is a "most" statement. In addition, I'm not sure if, or how, the conditional clause "where commercial news media constitute the dominant source of information" would somehow water down the force of the main clause.

[ohthatpatrick]

Which answer did you feel was more supportable than (D)?

This isn't a "must be true" question stem; it's "which of these is MOST supportable" from the provided info.

So we're not judging it by the standard of "is it wholly derivable", but just "is this the best available answer?"

Furthermore, if we know that the agenda of Inference questions is to get us to synthesize 2 or more pieces of info, it's hard to not like (D) as the intended output of what you get by combining:

news media emphasizes plane crashes more than auto accidents
+
news media influences how public interprets risk
(infer: news media would influence public into thinking plane crashes are bigger risk than auto accidents)
+
plane crashes are smaller risk than auto accidents

(infer: news media is influencing public with the wrong assessment of risk)


Finally, I don't think you have to interpret "public perception" as an ALL statement. Common sense would dictate that the public never (or almost never) perceives anything 100% identically, so that expression is intended to convey mainstream opinion.