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Difficulty: MediumPrinciple - Justify

Journalist: By accessing the mayor's secure communications without authorization, I obtained documents proving widespread embezzlement of city funds. Although my methods violated privacy statutes, exposing this corruption led to the recovery of millions of dollars for taxpayers and the removal of corrupt officials. Therefore, my actions were entirely justified.

Which one of the following principles, if valid, most helps to justify the journalist's reasoning?

  1. If an action directly leads to the exposure of government corruption and the recovery of taxpayer funds, then that action is entirely justified, even if it violates privacy statutes.Answer
  2. B
    An action that violates privacy statutes is entirely justified only if it directly results in the exposure of government corruption and the recovery of public funds.
  3. C
    Any action taken by a journalist is entirely justified provided that the journalist's primary intention is to uncover and expose government corruption.
  4. D
    If an action does not result in the recovery of taxpayer funds, then violating privacy statutes to perform that action is not entirely justified.
  5. E
    Any action that is entirely justified despite violating privacy statutes must be an action that directly results in the exposure of government corruption.

Answer

The principle stating that an action leading to the exposure of corruption and recovery of funds is entirely justified, even if it violates privacy statutes.
The journalist's argument reasons that a specific negative action (violating privacy) is outweighed by specific positive outcomes (exposing corruption and recovering funds). To logically justify this conclusion, we need a universal rule stating that these specific positive outcomes are sufficient to make an action entirely justified, regardless of the privacy violation. The correct answer provides this exact sufficient conditional relationship.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the premises of the argument.
Premise 1: The journalist violated privacy statutes. Premise 2: The action resulted in exposing corruption and recovering funds.
Understanding the established facts is required before evaluating what principle bridges them to the conclusion.
2
Identify the main conclusion.
The journalist's actions were entirely justified.
The conclusion is the endpoint of the argument that the correct principle must logically guarantee.
3
Formulate the missing logical bridge (the Justify principle).
If (Action exposes corruption and recovers funds) AND (Action violates privacy), THEN (Action is entirely justified).
A Principle-Justify question requires a conditional rule where the premises act as the sufficient condition and the conclusion acts as the necessary condition.
4
Evaluate the options against the formulated bridge.
The correct option explicitly matches this 'If [Premises], then [Conclusion]' structure without altering the criteria.
Distractors typically reverse this logic, make it a necessary condition, or introduce irrelevant terms like 'intention'.

Key Concept

Identifying a sufficient conditional rule that formally entails the argument's conclusion based on its specific premises.
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Topics

Principle - Justify

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