What would "they" refer to in this sentence?
The benefits of addressing, or simply displaying oneself to, a large news audience can be so great that many subjects conclude they are worth the risks of being misrepresented.
Would the boldfaced "they" be referring to
- the subjects
- the benefits of ~ audience
Solution 1:
Grammatically it's ambiguous, so we use common sense to disambiguate it. It doesn't make sense for the subjects to be worth risks -- we don't generally apply "worth" to people, and even when we do (such as determining compensation for causing the death of a loved one), it's hard to see how you could equate them with risks.
Furthermore, it's common to perform risk-benefit anaylysis, so we often compare the risks and benefits of the same action to decide whether we should take that action.
Based on both of these, we conclude that "they" refers to the benefits.
A variant where "they" would refer to the subjects would be
The benefits of addressing, or simply displaying oneself to, a large news audience can be so great that many subjects conclude they are willing to risk being misrepresented.
Now "risk" is an action being taken, so "they" has to be someone/something that can act, not an abstract concept like benefits.