Analyzing an Argument 1

The following is a memorandum from the business manager of a listener-supported public radio station.

*"For the past year, as part of an effort to broaden our supporter base, our Folk on the Air program has allocated less time to traditional American folk music and more time to Latino music and world music. In recent months, many long-term supporters of our station have written to complain about what they describe as the un-American bias of the program. In addition, the local newspaper has published a recent editorial critical to our shift in programming. Therefore, in order to forestall any further adverse publicity for the station and to avoid the loss of additional listener-supporters, we should discontinue our current emphasis on Latino and world music and restore the time devoted to traditional American folk music to its former level."

Respond by writing an essay in which you discuss the specific evidence you would need to judge the validity of the argument and explain how this evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.

In the memorandum the manager employs a variety of evident about program content, including long-term supporters complain and editorial critical on newspaper, to solve that they should give more time to traditional American folk music instead of Latino and world music. We may accept part of the manager's reasons regarding the program, but in the absence of some critical evidence, we cannot accept this argument as valid.

First of all, the change happened a year ago, but the complain and critical happened recently. If the change is the real reason of the supporter lose, why the audiences did not complain earlier? The author should provide more evidence about how the change affected the audiences population through the whole year. Otherwise, we can not rule out the possibility that there were some problem happened in programming recently which caused the complaint.

Granted that many long-term supporters don't like un-American music very much, there were no exact number of these supporters. Furthermore, there are no data about new supporter who are attracted by the Latino and world music. If the new supporters population is higher than the complained supporters, the further change will cause more loss.

A local newspaper published a editorial critical about the station, but we don't know the article quality and the affection of the newspaper. It can only be a complaint of an editor with low evidence and data. It may be a strategy of an unknown newspaper to attract readers. We need evidence to support that the common of this newspaper is value enough for the station to follow.

In conclusion, the decision is hastily made. To strengthen the argument, the author should give precise evident about auditors population. The author also needs to rule out other possible reasons of the recent complaint.