Detailed Instructions: Your task is to extract the thesis of an opinionated news article by selecting some of its text segments. The thesis is a summarization of what the author wants to persuade the reader of. Your answer should consist of segments of the given text. Note that you are not allowed to combine different sentences.
See one example below:
Problem: Our 'impartial' broadcasters have become mouthpieces of the elite. When people say they have no politics, it means that their politics aligns with the status quo . None of us are unbiased , none removed from the question of power . We are social creatures who absorb the outlook and opinions of those with whom we associate, and unconciously echo them . Objectivity is impossible . The illusion of neutrality is one of the reasons for the rotten state of journalism, as those who might have been expected to hold power to account drift thoughtlessly into its arms . But until I came across the scandal currently erupting in Canada, I hadn't understood just how quickly standards are falling . In 2013 reporters at CBC, Canada's equivalent of the BBC, broke a major story . They discovered that RBC - Royal Bank of Canada - had done something cruel and unusual even by banking standards . It was obliging junior staff to train a group of temporary foreign workers , who would then be given the staff's jobs . Just after the first report was aired, according to the website Canadaland, something odd happened : journalists preparing to expand on the investigation were summoned to a conference call with Amanda Lang, CBC's senior business correspondent and a star presenter . The reporters she spoke to say she repeatedly attempted to scuttle the story, dismissing it as trivial and dull . They were astonished . But not half as astonished as when they discovered the following, unpublished facts . First ,  that Lang had spoken at a series of events run or sponsored by RBC  - for which she appears, on one occasion, to have been paid around 15,000 Canadian dollars . Second , that she was booked to speak at an event sponsored by the outsourcing company the bank had hired to implement the cruel practice exposed by her colleagues . Third , that her partner is a board member at RBC . Lang then interviewed the bank's chief executive on her own show . When he dismissed the story as unfair and misleading , she did not challenge him . That evening she uncritically repeated his talking points on CBC's main current affairs programme . Her interests, again, were not revealed . Then she wrote a comment article for the Globe and Mail newspaper suggesting that her colleagues' story arose from an outdated suspicion of business, was dangerous to Canada's interests, and was nothing but "a sideshow" . Here's what she said about the bank's employment practices:"It's called capitalism, and it isn't a dirty word." Canadaland, which exposed Lang's conflicts last week, found that other journalists at the broadcaster were furious, but too frightened to speak on the record . But after CBC tried to dismiss the scandal as "half-truths based on anonymous sources" , Kathy Tomlinson, the reporter who had broken the story about the bank, bravely spoke publicly to the website . The following morning, staff in her office arrived to find this message spelt out in magnets on their fridge:"Jesse Brown snitches get stitches" . Jesse Brown is Canadaland's founder . CBC refused to answer my questions , and I have not had a response from Lang . It amazes me that she remains employed by CBC , which has so far done nothing but bluster and berate its critics . This is grotesque . But it's symptomatic of a much wider problem in journalism : those who are supposed to scrutinise the financial and political elite are embedded within it . Many belong to a service-sector aristocracy, wedded metaphorically (sometimes literally) to finance . Often unwittingly, they amplify the voices of the elite, while muffling those raised against it . A study by academics at the Cardiff School of Journalism examined the BBC Today programme's reporting of the bank bailouts in 2008 . It discovered that the contributors it chose were "almost completely dominated by stockbrokers, investment bankers, hedge fund managers and other City voices . Civil society voices or commentators who questioned the benefits of having such a large finance sector were almost completely absent from coverage." The financiers who had caused the crisis were asked to interpret it . The same goes for discussions about the deficit and the perceived need for austerity . The debate has been dominated by political and economic elites , while alternative voices - arguing that the crisis has been exaggerated, or that instead of cuts, the government should respond with Keynesian spending programmes or taxes on financial transactions, wealth or land- have scarcely been heard . Those priorities have changed your life : the BBC helped to shape the political consensus under which so many are now suffering . The BBC's business reporting breaks its editorial guidelines every day by failing to provide alternative viewpoints . Every weekday morning, the Today programme grovels to business leaders for 10 minutes . It might occasionally challenge them on the value or viability of their companies, but hardly ever on their ethics . Corporate critics are shut out of its business coverage - and almost all the rest . On BBC News at Six, the Cardiff researchers found, business representatives outnumbered trade union representatives by 19 to one . "The BBC tends to reproduce a Conservative, Eurosceptic, pro-business version of the world," the study said . This, remember, is where people turn when they don't trust the corporate press . While the way in which the media handle the stories that are covered is bad enough , the absence of coverage is even worse . If an issue does not divide the main political parties , it vanishes from view , though the parties now disagree on hardly anything . Another study reveals a near total collapse of environmental coverage on ITV and BBC news: it declined from 2.5% (ITV) and 1.6% (BBC) of total airtime in 2007 to, respectively, 0.2% and 0.3% in 2014 . There were as many news stories on these outlets about Madeleine McCann in 2014 - seven years after her disappearance - as there were about all environmental issues put together . Those entrusted to challenge power are the loyalists of power . They rage against social media and people such as Russell Brand, without seeing that the popularity of alternatives is a response to their own failures: their failure to expose the claims of the haut monde, their failure to enlist a diversity of opinion, their failure to permit the audience to see that another world is possible . If even the public sector broadcasters parrot the talking points of the elite , what hope is there for informed democratic choice? o Twitter: @georgemonbiot . A fully referenced version of this article can be found at Monbiot.com .
Solution: The illusion of neutrality is one of the reasons for the rotten state of journalism, as those who might have been expected to hold power to account drift thoughtlessly into its arms We are social creatures who absorb the outlook and opinions of those with whom we associate, and unconciously echo them
Explanation: The text span selected for thesis is meaningful and correct. Pay attention that there can be more than one correct thesis for each article. Some meaningful subsets of this thesis also can be accepted as a thesis, like : "none of us are unbiased"

Problem: The dawn of Kim Jong-un's rule. It has been a few years since the sudden death of the Sun of the Nation, Marshal Kim Jong-il which made his third son, Kim Jong-un, then in his late 20s, the supreme leader of North Korea . Three years is the length of the traditional mourning period that Koreans are supposed to observe after the death of their father or sovereign . Thus ,  now is the time to make some observations about Kim's North Korea . What has remained the same, and what has changed since December 2011? The dawn of Kim's rule was marked by intense purges of his father's top dignitaries . In December 2011, during his father's funeral, Kim walked next to his father's hearse in the company of three top generals and four top civilian officials . Three years on, none of these people have their jobs : At least one of them was executed , while all but one have disappeared without a trace . Kim's decision to arrest and execute Chang Song-taek, his aunt's husband, long the "grey eminence" of Pyongyang politics, was a dramatic signal to the elite . The sorry fate of Chang was meant to show that nobody is immune from the wrath of the supreme leader . These purges were obviously necessary to start changing the country , since Kim's policies will be very different from those of his father and grandfather . So far, the most important changes can be seen in the field of economic management . From late 2012, the North Korean government began to implement reforms which are remarkably similar to what China did in the early days of Deng Xiaoping, around 1980 . Farmers, who were hitherto government employees with a fixed salary, are now given a certain percentage of the harvest, and have predictably started to feel motivated . As a result, the food situation has improved markedly . In industry, a slow-motion switch from a Leninist, centrally planned economy to markets has been initiated as well . The unofficial private economy, far more advanced in North Korea than most imagine, is now quietly encouraged . There is no sign of relaxation in the political sphere, however . Kim has launched a massive crackdown on illegal border movements, effectively closing North Korea's border with China  - which had remained porous for decades . He has also done much to root out the penchant that many North Koreans have recently developed for smuggled foreign TV shows, especially South Korean soap operas and films . Such concerns are not merely motivated by paranoia, regardless of what the international media says . The supreme leader knows that his position is precarious, and that tightening the screws of social control and surveillance may help him prolong his rule . North Korea under Kim remains as stubborn in its nuclear ambitions as it was under his father . Having seen the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the popular rebellion against Libya's Gaddafi that was indirectly assisted by western might, North Korean decision-makers have every reason to want to continue to advance their nuclear weapons potential . At the same time ,  there has also been a truly unprecedented crisis in Sino- North Korean relations . In the last years of Kim Jong-il, China was North Korea's major sponsor and trade partner . Now things are different . The Chinese and North Korean media (strictly controlled by the government in both countries) have exchanged thinly veiled verbal attacks , while the Chinese government has frozen all Beijing-sponsored infrastructure projects in North Korea - including, for example, a new bridge over the Yalu River . The North Korean government under Kim has shown hitherto unprecedented interest in foreign investment, as long as this investment comes from sources other than China . At present, the young marshal has pinned his hopes on Russia - currently itself on a collision course with the West . North Korean leaders obviously believe that Russia under Vladimir Putin will behave like the Soviet Union once did and shower North Korea with aid grants as a reward for Pyongyang's militant anti-Americanism . Such hopes are misplaced , but it will take some time before Pyongyang's decision-makers realise the sad truth . There is little doubt that Kim wants to be popular and loved by his people, and perhaps sincerely cares about the wellbeing of the North Korean populace , though he might have rather eccentric ideas on what constitutes such wellbeing . Under his watch, the North Korean government has spent a significant part of its meagre resources on building all kinds of entertainment facilities, including an elite ski resort, a number of water parks and even a dolphinarium . Kim's North Korea is increasingly a place quite different from the North Korea of his father . It is moving towards a more efficient economy, but also towards more internal repression . It is more prone to erratic changes in domestic policy and more eccentric in many regards . But ,  of course , for the foreseeable future it is going to remain a nuclear and authoritarian regime, run by the Kim family and a small hereditary elite : This is not negotiable, irrespectively of what the outside world thinks and does .
Solution:
What has remained the same, and what has changed since December 2011? It has been a few years since the sudden death of the Sun of the Nation, Marshal Kim Jong-il which made his third son, Kim Jong-un, then in his late 20s, the supreme leader of North Korea