Motivator9 wrote: I was wondering if one of you guys could help me with a problem I've been struggling with.
PT 16, S3, Q 23.
I'm not sure why the answer choice is D because it seems to reverse the logic of the stimulus.
Thanks.
Relevant facts:
1. civil war
2. refugees are starving because of the government
3. report draft says refugees are starving because of the government
4. report does NOT give any other reasons the refugees might be starving
5. government suppresses mention of it causing starvation of refugees
Claim by journalist:
Despite the censorship, publishing this is still ethical. Why? Because it says "cleared by gov. censors."
Stimulus:
Correct answer must 1) agree with the journalist's claim, and 2) restrict information the least (out of the answer choices that satisfy condition 1, I guess).
A -- A report is unethical if it omits facts that would substantially alter the impression given of a group that likes or agrees with the facts that are actually reported (I take it that "congruent with" means "like or agrees with").
Clearly omitting the fact about the government causing the starvation would change the impression given of the government, and I'd also guess that the gov. is fine with news of starvation, since people may blame it on the rebels (the gov. just wants to return to the status quo, after all, so anything bad about the war is prima facie the fault of the rebels, who started it). So, both of the conditions for unethicalness are met by the report, and this principle clashes with the journalist's claim that it's still ethical. So this answer choice is wrong.
B -- A report is unethical if it omits facts that would exonerate one party.
By removing evidence that would dispel the suspicion that the rebels are causing the starvation, this is exactly what the censored report does, so by this principle the report is unethical. Wrong.
C -- A report is unethical if the gov has censored facts that make the gov look bad.
Again, this is exactly the case here. Wrong.
D -- A report is unethical if it has been censored, UNLESS you warn of censorship.
The disclaimer "cleared by gov. censors" is a warning of censorship, so this report meets the one condition whereby a censored report may still be ethical. Likely correct.
E -- Same as D, but the reported facts can't give a misleading impression.
Okay, so this choice also looks good. In deciding between D and E, we could reject E for two reasons. First, we could say the the censored report does give a misleading impression. Second, we could use the other condition given in the stimulus and say that this restricts information more than D.
I don't think it gives a misleading impression. Like I said in above in A and B, a reader may have a
suspicion that the rebels caused the starvation, but the censored report includes no information about what is causing the starvation, so it doesn't really create a misleading impression. Any suspicion of the rebels would just be conjecture and not supported by the report.
However, E obviously restricts information more than D, since it has an additional condition that censored reports must meet. So I think it fails the second condition given in the stimulus, and so D must be the right answer.
That's my take on it anyway.
D and E do kind of reverse the logic. "Unless" means "if not," so the expression here is
Facts_Deleted --> (NO warning --> Unethical)
or, more naturally
(Facts_Deleted and NO Warning) --> Unethical
