Miguel Espinal ENG-095/Creative Writing 4-2-13 Assignment: Post-Hoc-Fallacy Essay

Logical and Factual Fallacies

The issue of news reporters being able to keep their sources confidential from a court of law can be an example of a logical and or a factual fallacy. The question being asked is, if a court of law can legally demand a news reporter to reveal their sources. A story being covered on a court case in actuality is commonly reported based on First Amendment rights , not so much on factual information; in some cases, courts may find this not be considered truth or perhaps assume information was illegally gained. This specific court case had placed a gag order in an attempt for the defense to get a fair trial, yet information was gathered from un-named law enforcement officials prior to the gag order and was considered contempt on the reporter. After a hasty generalization, the judge assigned to the case subpoenaed the reporter who ran the story and demanded the reporter to reveal the sources of the information. If any judge in a court of law can legally gain names of confidential informants from news reporters, it could possibly ensure future informants to withhold vital information from courts of law and law enforcement officials. The ramifications of this

case, (if the decision to reveal confidential sources is allowed) can affect future courts of law to make unjust decisions. Arguments consist of premises, inferences, and conclusions. Arguments containing bad inferences, i.e. inferences where the premises dont give adequate support for the conclusion drawn, can certainly be called fallacious. What is less clear is whether arguments in courts of law containing false premises but which are otherwise legally fine should be called fallacious. If a fallacy is an error of reasoning, then strictly speaking such arguments are not fallacious; their reasoning, their logic, is sound. However, many of the traditional fallacies are of just this kind. Its therefore best to define fallacy in a way that includes them. Anyone who rejects the arguments conclusion should also reject at least one of its premises (the one that is the same as its conclusion), and so should reject the argument as a whole. Anyone who accepts all of the arguments premises alrea dy accept the arguments conclusion so cant be said to have been persuaded by the argument. In neither case, then, will the argument be successful?