The media now devote more coverage to crime than they did ten years ago. Yet this is not because the crime rate has increased, but rather because the public is now more interested in reading and hearing about crime. After all, a crucial factor in the media' s decisions about what issues to cover and to what extent to cover them is the interests of their audiences. The proposition that the public is now more interested in reading and hearing about crime plays which one of the following roles in the argument? ['It is a generalization based on the claim that the crime rate has increased over the past ten years.', 'It is presented as evidence that the media decide what to cover and to what extent to cover it depending on the interests of the public.', 'It is offered as an alternative explanation of why the media devote more coverage to crime now than they did ten years ago.', 'It supports the conclusion that the media now devote more coverage to crime than the crime rate alone justifies.']