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.
One example is below.
Q: 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 But not half as astonished as when they discovered the following, unpublished facts .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 .
A: 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
Rationale: 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"
Q: Obama hands Cuba's Castros a major victory, but Congress can still stop it. Establishing ties with Cuba has been on President Obama's bucket list for some time . Health care -- done . Amnesty for illegal immigrants  -- done . Cuba -- next . This last one also has the added bonus point that it puts him right with the international left , which lionizes Castro . And the president will go on picking off the next items on the bucket list for the next two years of his term unless Congress decides to stop him . Should they work up the gumption , lawmakers will find they can do many things to stand up for the prerogatives of the legislative branch . Obviously, the release of the 65-year-old American hostage Alan Gross should be welcome . His "crime" was to bring computers to Jews on the island . For the last five years, he has been a victim of Cuba's state terrorism , just as 11 million Cubans have been held hostage by their government for the past five decades . Exchanging three hardened Cuban spies for Gross, however ,  establishes an insulting moral and legal equivalency . The spies actions led to the death of an American in the 1990s , and they were duly convicted . Their release in exchange for Gross creates an incentive for rogue regimes and individual actors to kidnap Americans all over the world . Not only does President Obama's action fail to advance freedom in Cuba , it throws a lifeline to Cuba's dictators , whose current supplier of funds, Venezuela, is on the ropes because of plunging oil prices . It surrenders to the demands for normalization that the Castros have been making for decades . So what can Congress do? Right off the bat, Congress must make it crystal clear to President Obama that he lacks the authority to lift the embargo on Cuba, allow trade to take place between the two nations, let tourists to go to Cuba to bail out the regime or give Cuba have access to capital markets . U.S  law--the Helms-Burton Act of 1996--gives the Congress power to override any action taken by the executive to lift the embargo . In order to lift the embargo, the Cuban government would have to give the Cuban people a number of rights--of association, speech, political activity, etc  -- that President Obama obviously failed to secure in his 45-minute conversation with Cuban dictator Raul Castro Tuesday . Congress can also make clear to the president that there are statutory criteria that must be met before his administration can take Cuba off the State Department list of terrorism sponsors . The president must inform Congress that there has been a change of leadership and policies of the Cuban government and that Castro has given assurances that it will no longer support terrorist acts . Can President Obama do any of that? Senators should also make clear that they will put a hold on any ambassador that Mr  Obama nominates to serve in Cuba unless he can guarantee that the Cuban government is no longer a threat to the United States and has decided to grant freedom to people in Cuba . Sen  Marco Rubio, R-Fla , has already said he plans to do that . Additionally ,  Congress can look into the possibility of using policy riders in the upcoming DHS appropriations debate in February and the Fiscal Year 2016 appropriations process to deny the president funds for setting up relations . Congress must act because President Obama has been completely feckless in his entire approach to Cuba . He received nothing in exchange for many substantial concessions made to the Communist regime . After five years of "negotiations" President Obama ended exactly where Raul Castro's demands began five years ago . As Senator Marco Rubio said, President "Obama is the worst negotiator since Carter." Mr  Obama's statement was filled with Havana's communist talking points, such as affirming that Cubans are poor and unfree because of the embargo, or that Cuba was a U.S  colony . None of that is true , and yet Mr  Obama said it . Congress must act to limit the damage inherent in this Havana Giveaway . Left unchecked , Obama will simply move on to the next misguided item on his bucket list .
A:
Establishing ties with Cuba has been on President Obama's bucket list for some time