Magazine Editor: I Know that Some of Our Regular Advertisers have been Pressuring us to Give Favorable Mention to their Products in our Articles

Question: Magazine editor: I know that some of our regular advertisers have been pressuring us to give favourable mention to their products in our articles, but they should realise that for us to yield to their wishes would actually be against their interests. To remain an effective advertising vehicle, we must have loyal readership, and we would soon lost that readership if our readers suspect that our editorial integrity has been compromised by pandering to advertisers.

Advertising-sales director: You underestimate the sophistication of our readers. They recognize that the advertisements we carry are not articles, so their response to the advertisements has never depended on their opinion of the editorial integrity of the magazine as a whole.

Which one of the following is the most accurate assessment of the advertising-sales director’s argument as a response to the magazine editor’s argument?

1. It succeeds because it shows that the editor’s argument depends on an unwarranted assumption about factors affecting an advertisement’s effectiveness.
2. It success because it exposes as mistaken the editor’s estimation of the sophistication of the magazine’s readers.
3. It succeeds because it undermines the editor’s claim about how the magazine’s editorial integrity would be affected by allowing advertisers to influence articles.
4. It fails because the editor’s argument does not depend on any assumption about readers’ response to the advertisements they see in the magazine.
5. It fails because it is based on a misunderstanding of the editor’s view about how readers respond to advertisements they see in the magazine.

“Magazine Editor: I Know that Some of Our Regular Advertisers have been Pressuring us to Give Favorable Mention to their Products in our Articles” is a GMAT Critical question. This particular GMAT Critical Reasoning topic has been taken from ‘ GMAT Official Guide Verbal Review, 2015 edition’. This GMAT critical reasoning question analyzes the argument type. in GMAT critical reasoning an assumption is an implied hypothesis. So we are looking for something that is implied in the argument. The GMAT CR section contains 10 -13 GMAT critical reasoning questions out of 36 GMAT verbal questions. In this topic, candidates need to analyze the passage and select the most appro[priate option.

Answer: D
Explanation:
A GMAT Critical Reasoning section comprises some facts and arguments. GMAT critical reasoning tests the reasoning abilities of the candidate along with logical and analytical thinking. The candidate has to deduce the correct option by finding the logically correct argument or by eliminating the irrelevant arguments.

We need to find the most accurate assessment of the advertising-sales director’s argument as a response to the magazine editor’s argument.

The Counter argument presented by the Advertising-sales director is not at all convincing. The reason is that he tried to negate the editor's argument. The sales director added the fact that the readers were smart enough to distinguish between advertisements and articles. Hence the response to ads doesn't depend on their opinion of the integrity of the magazine's content. The whole point of argument was what the editor believed in. The editor said that publishing favorable writing about the products would effect the image of the magazine as a mode of honest and transparent publication. The sales director countered it by saying that the readers were smart enough to distinguish between ads and articles. He does not mention anything on the topic that whether it would be a good option to post favorable writings about their regular clients. There is no discussion on what effect this will cause on readers when they encounter biased(mostly favorable) opinions in the magazine's articles toward it's regular advertisers.

This explains a lot and from the conclusion, we can eliminate A, B and C. Now, we will check the two remaing options further. 

Option D. This is the correct option. It says that the editor’s argument does not depend on assumption. The editor is concerned about the loss of integrity of the articles because of favorable mention of product in the article. They are not concerned about the response to advertisements they see in magazines. So the concern is regarding the articles mentioned and not the advertisements..
​Option E. It fails because it is based on a misunderstanding of the editor’s view about how readers respond to advertisements they see in the magazine. –The sales guy does not misunderstand the editor's view about readers' view on ads they see in the magazine, the editor is concerned about preserving the INTEGRITY/ ethics of the article and not about the response to ads in magazine to misunderstand a view, there has to be a view. But the editor's view is completely different.

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