Political advocacy groups have begun to use information services to disseminate information that is then accessed by the public via personal computer. Since many groups are thus able to bypass traditional news sources, whose reporting is selective, and to present their political views directly to the public, information services present a more balanced picture of the complexities of political issues than any traditional news source presents.

Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument above depends?

A. Information services are accessible to enough people to ensure that political advocacy groups can use these services to reach as large a percentage of the public as they could through traditional news sources.
B. People could get a thorough understanding of a particular political issue by sorting through information provided by several traditional news sources, each with differing editorial biases.
C. Information on political issues disseminated through information services does not come almost entirely from advocacy groups that share a single bias.
D. Traditional news sources seldom report the views of political advocacy groups accurately.
E. Most people who get information on political issues from newspapers and other traditional news sources can readily identify the editorial biases of those sources.

OA is C. I'm confused.

Please help.

It would help me to know which answer you leaned toward, and a little bit more about why you are confused.

For now, I'll suggest that "Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument above depends?" is stricter than "which of the following supports the conclusion?" There may be several choices that support the conclusion, at least a little bit.

Instead, you should translate this question as "Which of the following MUST be true if you are to have any hope of reaching this conclusion?" or "Which of the following, if ELIMINATED, would kill the conclusion?"

(C) is correct because if information on political issues disseminated through information services WERE almost entirely from advocacy groups that share a single bias, then you COULD NOT claim that information services present a more balanced picture of political issues than traditional news sources.

_________________
Emily Sledge
Instructor
ManhattanGMAT

why E is wrong/.

remember that an ASSUMPTION needs to be something that is ABSOLUTELY REQUIRED for the argument to work at all.

choice (e) is a terrible choice: not only is it not required, but it actually weakens the argument.

to wit:
the point of the argument is that, basically, people get a more balanced idea of issues from the use of "information services" (vs. traditional media).
therefore, the main drive in the argument is to show that "information services" give a MORE balanced idea, and, equivalently, that traditional media give a LESS balanced idea.

according to choice (e), people can figure out the bias in traditional media on their own. this would lend support to the idea that people will be able to obtain and maintain a balanced idea even from the traditional media coverage, because they'll be able to see through the bias - which runs exactly counter to the spirit of the argument.

so, not only is this choice clearly not REQUIRED, but it's actually detrimental to the argument.