Prompt: The argument’s conclusion is properly inferred if which one of the following is assumed?
Difficulty: 🌕🌕🌕🌑
How will the right answer fit in terms of support and conclusion?
Only the right answer will be support that guarantees the conclusion.
Highlight the main conclusion in the passage, if there is one:
a democracy cannot thrive without effective news media.
Clearly, [CONCLUSION]. After all, [SUPPORT], and [SUPPORT].
It may be harder to catch when the conclusion is the first sentence, but this author totally changes the subject. Their conclusion is about “effective news media” even though that wording never comes up in the support. To guarantee that conclusion, the right answer is gonna have to give us some kind of info about “effective news media” and connect it to other wording in the argument.
Map the wording of the answers to the wording of the passage:
(A) All societies that have effective news media are thriving democracies.
Has the magic phrase in it, but the conclusion isn’t trying to prove that a society is a “thriving democracy”. You might also notice this is exactly reversing the condition in the conclusion, which said democracies gotta have effective media. This says societies with effective media gotta be democracies. Running it backwards like that is never valid.
(B) If an electorate has access…
(C) A democracy will thrive if…
(D) A democracy cannot thrive if…
These don’t explain “effective news media” so they should be immediately out.
(E) …will not have access to unbiased information…
So having access to info means you gotta have “effective news media”. And being knowledgeable means you gotta have access to info, and a democracy can’t thrive unless folks are knowledgeable. Aaand now it all adds up. Democracy thriving means you gotta have effective news media. Thank god there are only two answers that mentioned “effective news media”.
(E) is the correct answer.
Common pattern/s in this question: You will see several conclusions that change the subject in every LR section. There might not be any pattern it pays to recognize more than this one my friends.
Elliot Hirsen / LSAT coach 
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