单选题
"I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers," Mahatma Gandhi once said. Journalist-haters like him might not care about the agony of America's news firms, but many Americans do. Nearly a third of them say they have abandoned a news source because they thought the quality of its information was declining. According to "The State of the News Media 2013", a report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism at the Pew Research Centre, the deteriorating financial state of news organizations has hurt their output. Newspaper staffs have shrunk by around 30% since their peak in 1989, and newspapers collectively now employ fewer than 40,000 full-time professionals, the lowest number since the mid-1970s. Americans who think media firms are putting out fewer original, thoughtful stories are probably right. Weather, traffic and sport now account for around 40% of local television newscasts. The average length of a story keeps falling. Only 20% of local TV stories exceed a minute, and half take less than 30 seconds. On cable-news channels, live reports, which require camera crews and journalists actually to show up somewhere, have fallen by a third in daytime programs in the past five years. Interview segments, which are cheap, have risen. Americans may also prefer talking heads because they increasingly prefer to hear opinion rather than fact. This trend is highlighted by the popularity of Fox, a conservative news network, and of MSNBC, its left-leaning counterpart. CNN, which tends to toe the middle line, continues to struggle with its ratings unless there is a big news event. Where is the good news? Last year local TV stations, especially those in swing states like Florida and Ohio, got a welcome boost from the $3 billion spent on TV advertising during the election. And newspapers are now starting in large numbers to demand payment for their digital content. Pew reckons that around a third of America's 1,380 dailies have started (or will soon launch) paywalls, inspired by the success of the New York Times, where 640,000 subscribers get the digital edition and circulation now accounts for a larger portion of revenues than advertising. Boosting circulation revenue will help stem losses from print advertising, since it has become clear that digital advertising will not be enough. For every $16 lost in print advertising last year, newspapers made only around $1 from digital ads. The bulk of the $37.3 billion spent on digital advertising in 2012 went to five firms: Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft and AOL. Not much Gandhian equality there.
单选题
The decline of newspapers' information quality is mainly caused by ____.
【正确答案】
A
【答案解析】解析：题干提及的“报纸信息质量下降”首先出现在第一段末句。而第二段①句末的hurt their output与此对应。该句讲述造成该现象的原因是the deteriorating financial state of news organizations“新闻机构不断恶化的财政状况”，A项所述与此对应，故为答案。也许有同学不理解deteriorating“恶化的”一词，但根据全文上下的语境，至少能判断出这是一个贬义词，因而可推测原因是由于报业集团不好的经济状况造成，也能选出A项。
单选题
According to Paragraph 4, which of the following is true of cable-news channels?
【正确答案】
B
【答案解析】解析：第四段比较了两种节目类型：现场直播新闻和采访类节目。其中③句讲到谈话类节目受到欢迎，因为人们更愿意听到观点，而非事实(prefer to hear opinions)，故B项正确。
单选题
It can be inferred from Paragraph 5 that in the future _____.