Q10 - Broadcaster: Our radio station

[griffin.811]

Does the ambiguity around the term "public interest" stem from its first use being "what is best for the public" and its second use being what the public is actually interested in?

Thanks

[ohthatpatrick]

That is exactly right. The fancy term for this flaw is Equivocation.

Most of the time that Flaw answer choices give us this option (i.e. that a certain "term" was used in two different ways), the answer is wrong.

It shows up much more as a trap answer then a real answer.

However, if you can ever supply two different meanings to the "term" in question (as you just did, saying Public Interest 1 = 'what's good for the public', Public Interest 2 = 'what the public is interested in'), then you should pick that answer.

Nicely done.

Weirdly enough, they've done this equivocation flaw with 'public interest' more than once. Check out Test 43's LR section, #18, about a kidnapping in Ontario.

Enjoy!

[griffin.811]

The piece about that being a trap is nice to know! Thanks for the verification, and now I'm curious about others like this...going to do some digging and what I can find.

[wj097]

That is exactly right. The fancy term for this flaw is Equivocation.

Most of the time that Flaw answer choices give us this option (i.e. that a certain "term" was used in two different ways), the answer is wrong.

It shows up much more as a trap answer then a real answer.

However, if you can ever supply two different meanings to the "term" in question (as you just did, saying Public Interest 1 = 'what's good for the public', Public Interest 2 = 'what the public is interested in'), then you should pick that answer.

Nicely done.

Weirdly enough, they've done this equivocation flaw with 'public interest' more than once. Check out Test 43's LR section, #18, about a kidnapping in Ontario.

Enjoy!

Hey Patrick, what would be the basis of judging "public interest" used in the first sentence to mean 'what's good for the public', and not 'what the public is interested in'? Technically the sentence by itself would be perfectly viable sentence to mean the latter?

On that basis, the errors that I was focusing on were
1. "only" reply (conclusion)
2. Fact that the argument reads like a circular logic

Generally I have hard time IDing this equivocal term flaws, any good tactic??

Thx

[frenchvanillabosco]

Can you explain why answer choice B is not correct?
Is it because the broadcaster concedes that the critics are right, but they have to do it anyway?

[ohthatpatrick]

Quickly, to the question from two posts ago, we only know the first use of "public interest" through context and familiarity with English expressions.

"Serve the public interest" always means "in the best interest of the public" and never means "serving the public's curiosity".

Here's a complete explanation that will dissect all the wrong answers:
===============

Question Type: Flaw

Argument Core:

It's tough, because there's not really an explicit conclusion here.

Essentially we have to invent a fuzzy conclusion like

Critics conclude "that expose was bad"
why? "too intrusive"

The broadcaster is concluding "that expose was okay"
why?
"station has responsibility to serve the public interest"
+
"there is overwhelming public interest in the private lives of local celebrities"
=====
thus (subsid conc), "it's our responsibility to cover the private lives of local celebrities"

-------- what is a flaw with that reasoning?

The author was trying to make a pretty mathematical argument.

We have responsibility to serve public interest.
There is public interest in X.
-----------
Thus, we have responsibility to publicize X.

The problem with that argument is that the 1st premise does NOT mean "we have the responsibility to cover any topic the public is interested in".

Instead, "serving the public interest" means "we have the responsibility to work for the greater good of the public".

Since the author is using two different senses of the term 'public interest', but his logic needs those two uses of 'public interest' to be interchangeable.

=== answer choices ===

(A) If anything, our author is assuming you DON'T have a right to privacy, since he's defending the station's invasion of private lives.

(B) If the author had said something like, "the critics' objection over privacy has no merit. Therefore, our recent expose was unobjectionable." THIS argument would be guilty of what (B) is describing.

But the question stem specifically asks us about the flaw in defending the radio station (against the critics' objection). The defense is narrowly limited to shooting down the attack. The attack is that the expose was excessively intrusive. So we're only concerned with whether or not the author effectively shoots down the claim that the expose was excessively intrusive.

(C) The critics used this term, not the author, so we wouldn't fault the author for failing to define this term.

(D) Let's see, were we ever talking about legal responsibility? I don't think so. Radio stations aren't legally required to cover certain stories. 'Responsibility' wasn't ever being used in a legal sense. Even moral obligation is a stretch, but "serving the public interest" is sort of ethical/moral in nature.

(E) Usually, these Equivocation (two different meanings) answers are wrong, but you should see if the same term is being used two different ways. If you can easily provide one synonym for the first usage (serving the public good) and a completely different synonym for the second usage (satisfying the public's curiosity), then it's valid!

(E) is the correct answer.