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 input: 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 But not half as astonished as when they discovered the following, unpublished facts .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 output: 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"
Q: When should voluntary euthanasia not be an option? This week a court in Belgium announced that the convicted rapist and murderer Frank Van Den Bleeken would be put to death by a lethal injection, in spite of the fact that the death penalty is banned across Europe . Van Den Bleeken's case was unusual : having previously been declared insane and not criminally responsible, he had himself asked to be euthanised on the grounds that he would rather die than spend the rest of his life in jail . Today the Belgian justice minister announced that Van Den Bleeken would not be euthanised after all, amid reports that the prisoner had changed his mind . Nonetheless ,  the case provides a fascinating twist to the old debate about euthanasia . Should Van Den Bleeken have been allowed to die? The moral defence of voluntary euthanasia is usually applied to people suffering from a terminal illness . But Van Den Bleeken isn't terminally ill and isn't in physical pain . Another traditional requirement is that the wish to die should be voluntary and competent . But how can the choices of someone who has been declared insane be regarded as voluntary and competent? The concern is that granting his request would make it a case of involuntary euthanasia , and that is usually seen as morally unacceptable . If there is an issue about Van Bleeken's sanity that is because of his alleged inability to control his sexual impulses . But it could be argued that this doesn't affect the validity of his request to be euthanised . The implication is that while some of his decisions might be involuntary or incompetent, this doesn't apply to his choice of death over a lifetime behind bars . Even so , should his request have been granted, given that he isn't terminally ill? One argument for allowing voluntary euthanasia where terminal illness isn't an issue turns on the idea of wellbeing : people should be allowed to choose death where they would literally be better off dead or where their life literally isn't worth living . Another argument turns on human autonomy : we should respect a person's free choices as long as they don't harm anyone else . Someone who is not terminally ill could still satisfy these requirements . Had Van Den Bleeken been allowed to die, critics may say it would have risked opening the floodgates for other similar cases . Belgium has seen a dramatic rise in euthanasia since the practice was legalised in 2002 and permitted in cases of pain and psychological distress, as well as terminal illness . Some are opposed to voluntary euthanasia as a matter of principle . The philosopher David Velleman argues that there isn't a fundamental right to choose between life and death, and that a person's rights don't expand when they become terminally ill or psychologically distressed . He is heavily influenced by 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant . According to Kant, morality requires that we respect the dignity of persons, and the dignity of persons makes them intrinsically valuable . For Kant, a person's dignity can't be traded against their wellbeing or happiness , and the fact that a person believes that their life isn't worth living doesn't make it acceptable for them to be euthanised . The Van Den Bleeken case puts pressure on these standard arguments for and against voluntary euthanasia . Suppose that, contrary to Kant's view, voluntary euthanasia is morally permissible as long as the person asking to be euthanised would be genuinely better off dead . Relatives of Van Den Bleeken's victim may well argue that the fact(if it is a fact) that he would be better off dead is precisely a reason for not allowing him to be put to death . From this perspective, euthanasia looks like a way for him to circumvent his sentence . Van Den Bleeken's victim was Christiane Remacle, a 19-year-old he raped and strangled in 1989 . Her sisters are reported to have said that Van Den Bleeken should be forced to languish in jail , and their reaction brings out an ambivalence in how we think about the death penalty for murder . Relatives of murder victims often demand the death penalty as the ultimate punishment , but the Van Den Bleeken case suggests that, at least from the standpoint of the perpetrator, the ultimate sanction may be life behind bars . But the intrinsic value argument against voluntary euthanasia can also be hard to swallow, in this case . Christiane Remacle's sisters might balk at the idea that a murderer's life is intrinsically valuable . It's hard not to sympathise , and there remain strong reasons for not allowing Van Den Bleeken to be euthanised regardless of whether his life is intrinsically valuable . As long as euthanasia is seen as a way for him to circumvent his sentence, respect for his victim and her family demands that he isn't given the option .
A:
One argument for allowing voluntary euthanasia where terminal illness isn't an issue turns on the idea of wellbeing Some are opposed to voluntary euthanasia as a matter of principle