I 153

doudoumi07UID: 2755418

TOPIC: ARGUMENT153 - The following is from an editorial in the Midvale Observer, a local newspaper.

"Ever since the 1950's, when television sets began to appear in the average home, the rate of crimes committed by teenagers in the country of Alta has steadily increased. This increase in teenage crime parallels the increase in violence shown on television. According to several national studies, even very young children who watch a great number of television shows featuring violent scenes display more violent behavior within their home environment than do children who do not watch violent shows. Furthermore, in a survey conducted by the Observer, over 90 percent of the respondents were parents who indicated that prime-time television-programs that are shown between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.-should show less violence. Therefore, in order to lower the rate of teenage crime in Alta, television viewers should demand that television programmers reduce the amount of violence shown during prime time."
WORDS: 532
TIME: 01:33:01
DATE: 2010/1/31 18:17:55

Grounding on the argument, the author supposing that teenage increasing crimes rate is largely due to the increasing of violence shown on television, and then synthesizing the hypothesize and another survey that most parents indicate television show program between 7 p.m and 9 p.m should show less violence, the author accordingly suggests that television viewers should request the television programmers reduce the amount of violence shown during prime time. Although the author's reasoning seems appealing, however, the conclusion relies on a series unwarranted assumptions, which render it unpersuasive as it stands. The reasons are stated as follows.

A threshold problem with this argument involves the survey itself. The statistical reliability of the survey is really doubtful. Namely, the speaker provide no evidence that the number of the parents who accept the survey is statistically significant or the respondents were representative of the overall group of parents. That is to say ,this survey merely involves the parents who were the readers of Midvale Observer, a local newspaper. It entirely possible that the respondents are limited to local. Furthermore, the parents who accept the survey consider television should reduce their violence program between 7 p.m and 9 p.m ,but the author recommend all television viewers should demand television programmers to reduce the violence show during prime time, which distorts the respondents' original intention. Anyway, lacking evidence of sufficiently representative sample, the author can not justifiably rely on the survey to draw any recommendation whatsoever.

Another problem that undermines the argument is that the author overlooks other factors that result the fact that the increase in teenage crime is merely due to the increase in violence show on TV. According to the author's recommendation, the conclusion that television viewers should demand the television programmers reduce the violence shown during prime time is merely due to the increasing teenage crime rate have some relationships with the growth of violence programs on TV. However, in all likelihood, this is simply not the case. Perhaps the social security environment go from bad to worse result in the increase in teenage crime, or perhaps the teenagers who commit crime seldom watch TV or violence TV programs, or perhaps those teenagers have inborn tendency of violence. In short , the author fails to establish a causal relationship between the increase in violence shown on TV and the increase in teenage crime, the speaker must rule out all other feasible explanations for the disparity.

Moreover, another flaw that weakens the logic of the argument is that the author fails to define the term violence behavior, thus we can not evaluate if watching a great number of TV shows featuring violent scenes has any relation with teenage crime. Perhaps teenagers who watching a great number of TV shows featuring violent scenes don not have any tendency in violent.

In summary , the argument is logically flawed and therefore unconvincing as it stands. To support this conclusion the arguer should give other possible explanations for the relation between increase teenage crime and the increase TV shows of violence, this evidence in itself lends little credible support to the author's conclusion about the TV viewers should demand TV programmers to reduce the amount of violence shown during prime time.