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.
Example: 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 But not half as astonished as when they discovered the following, unpublished facts .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 .
Example 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
Example 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: State of the Union: Advice for Joni Ernst. Here's a suggestion for Joni Ernst, the new Republican senator from Iowa , who will deliver the GOP response to the State of the Union address Tuesday night . Get a chorus together and open with this old Sammy Cahn-Jule Styne number:"It seems to me I've heard that song before; it's from an old familiar score, I know it well, that melody." Advance leaks of the president's address indicate he will call for higher taxes on the wealthy and successful in order to pay for programs for the poor and middle class . This is boilerplate Democratic wealth redistribution we've heard since New Deal days , which appeals more to emotions than it does to principles with a long history of success . Since the advent of modern "anti-poverty" programs 50 years ago, according to an analysis by The Heritage Foundation, "U.S  taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs." And yet the poverty rate remains essentially unchanged . One might conclude then that if you've spent 50 years and $22 trillion trying without success to fix something , perhaps you're doing it wrong and should try a different approach . If the goal is more successful people who can take care of themselves , incentives must be put in place to encourage people to make right decisions . First on any anti-poverty help-the-middle-class list must be a stable family life . A two-parent home where adults love and are committed to each other and in which their children feel loved creates a climate in which moral and economic values like hard work, self-control, personal responsibility and accountability flourish . To help achieve this, parents must be educated and they must have jobs . Government can make this easier by reforming the tax code to remove the "marriage penalty," which in too many instances charges higher taxes to married couples than to singles, and increasing the exemption deductible for children, which might make it possible for one parent to stay home with young children; allow college tuition to be deductible to incentivize more people to obtain a college education and ease their debt upon graduation . Better yet, scrap the tax code entirely and replace it with a flat tax or consumption tax that allows people to save, invest and spend more of the money they earn . Economically, there must be a change in attitude from working to pay bills, to working to build wealth . Bills, like the poor, we will always have with us, but in building wealth one moves toward independence and personal satisfaction that pays dividends in liberty and personal choice . Government should also make it easier for people to move in pursuit of new opportunities . My late grandfather worked for the B and O Railroad for 50 years . He retired with a pension, a gold-plated watch and a lifetime train pass . Those days are long gone . People need to be ready to move to places in pursuit of opportunities that can bring economic and career growth . Earning more produces more in taxable income and more income means more tax money for federal and state treasuries . My wife and I have moved eight times (so far) and each move provided new opportunities, more experience and eventually higher incomes . Here's another suggestion for Sen  Ernst and the new Republican Congress . Let the Democrats focus on misery, poverty and failure . You promote hope, opportunity and achievement . Begin featuring people with stories to tell of how they overcame difficult circumstances -- from poverty, welfare, addiction, single motherhood, and so on -- and are now independent, strong and if not prosperous, then at least free of their addiction to government . Leaders should inspire others to follow examples of people who have succeeded in life . Instead ,  the Democrats' mantra has been that the poor and middle class can't succeed without government help . If that were true , the money spent on programs aimed at the poor and middle class would have succeeded by now . It's long past time for a new direction and for a new "song" with different words . In the month we observe the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr , how about "We HAVE overcome"?

Solution: Here's a suggestion for Joni Ernst, the new Republican senator from Iowa