Critical Reasoning

Despite a steady decrease in the average number of hours worked per person per week, the share of the population that reads a daily newspaper has declined greatly in the past 20 years. But the percentage of the population that watches television daily has shown a similarly dramatic increase over the same period. Clearly, increased television viewing has caused a simultaneous decline in newspaper reading.

Which one of the following, if true, would be most damaging to the explanation given above for the decline in newspaper reading?

(A) There has been a dramatic increase over the past 20 years in the percentage of people who tell polltakers that television is their primary source of information about current events.

(B) Of those members of the population who do not watch television, the percentage who read a newspaper every day has also shown a dramatic decrease.

(C) The time people spend with the books and newspapers they read has increased, on average, from 1 to 3 hours per week in the past 20 years.

(D) People who spend large amounts of time each day watching television are less able to process and remember printed information than are those who do not watch television.

(E) A typical television set is on 6 hours a day, down from an average of 6 1/2 hours a day 5 years ago.

Source: LSAT