Explanation for Question 19 From the Reading Section on the Official Sat Practice Test 6
Question 19 says based on the table and which year were people most trusting 2 of the news media. So let's look at the table here. 3 If people are going to be trusting of the news media, 4 then they're going to believe that these news organizations are giving them accurate 5 and correct information. So we want to look at the percentages associated 6 with the number of people believing that news organizations are going to get the 7 facts straight. So if we're looking for the year in which they trusted 8 the media, most it's going to have the highest percentage of belief that news 9 organizations are going to get the facts straight. 10 So then that would be 1985 with 55% 11 of respondents seeing these new stories as getting 12 the facts straight or being accurate. So then if we look down here 13 at the answer choices, we can pretty quickly see that answer choice a is 14 going to be correct because that's the year that we just determined based on 15 the table. 16 But if we look just to make sure we're on the same page about 17 why we looked at the column that we looked at, 18 if you're trusting something, you're going to trust them, 19 that they're telling the truth. And so getting the facts straight is associated with 20 telling the truth. These last two sections are about bias. 21 So if they're independent or if they're influenced versus if they deal fairly or 22 if they tend to favor one side, those are going to be about bias 23 and not about accuracy, 24 right? This first piece is about accuracy. 25 And so if you trust someone to get the facts straight, 26 then you just trust them in general. So that's why we looked at that 27 piece of evidence there in 1985 to the correct answer.