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 But not half as astonished as when they discovered the following, unpublished facts .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: The greatest trick Obama ever pulled was convincing the world America isn't still at war. The holiday headlines blared without a hint of distrust:"End of War" and "Mission Ends" and "U.S  formally ends the war in Afghanistan", as the US government and Nato celebrated the alleged end of the longest war in American history . Great news! Except, that is, when you read past the first paragraph : "the fighting is as intense as it has ever been since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001," according to the Wall Street Journal . And about 10,000 troops will remain there for the foreseeable future (more than we had a year after the Afghan war started) . Oh, and they'll continue to engage in combat regularly . But other than that, yeah, the war is definitely over . This is the new reality of war : As long as the White House doesn't admit the United States is at war , we're all supposed to pretend as if that's true . This ruse is not just the work of the president . Members of Congress, who return to work this week, are just as guilty as Barack Obama in letting the public think we're Definitely Not at War, from Afghanistan and Somalia to the new war with Isis in Iraq and Syria and beyond . Thirteen years on, the near limitless war authorization Congress passed for the Afghanistan war remains in place, with no sign that Congress wants to even debate revoking it . This is what will allow US troops to continue fighting, despite the mission supposedly being "formally" over . Just a month before Obama made his farcical announcement last week , he signed a secret order to ensure US troops continue to engage in combat missions against various "militant groups" in Afghanistan for all of 2015 . The war in Afghanistan is over, the President says . The sky is green, the President says . The sun rises in the West, the President says . Another place the United States is Definitely Not at War? Pakistan, where, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the US conducted multiple drone strikes between Christmas and New Year's Eve, killing at least nine people . We don't know who died , but the Associated Press assured us they were "militants", despite the US government's definition of "militant" having been manipulated beyond comprehension . The US Congress, of course, has steadfastly refused to attempt to place any real legislative limits on drone strikes, even those that have killed American citizens - which, as various scholars have been screaming for years, represent an unconstitutional violation of the Fifth Amendment . Meanwhile, the Defense Department quietly announced a few days before Christmas that, later this month, another 1,300 troops will deploy to Iraq in its ever-expanding undeclared war on Isis . A Pentagon spokesperson emphasized these are Definitely Not Combat Troops, despite the US government's current definition of "combat" being so narrow that it's "rejected by virtually every military expert"  - not to mention that the troops already in Iraq are already under "regular" fire, according to CNN . The US continues to launch airstrikes against Isis and various other groups in Syria as well . As the new Congress opens in Washington on Tuesday, it once again has the opportunity to formally debate and actually vote on the war against Isis, a constitutional obligation from which America's politicians shamefully slunk away , preferring instead to campaign for re-election - free of difficult decision-making . Now , almost five months in to a war the administration freely admits will last for years if not decades, hardly anyone seems to care what legal experts across the political spectrum believe : this war is without precedent - and it's illegal without Congressional approval . Now ,  the US Congress is not exactly a body known for its nuance and restraint , and there are many reasons why war against Isis remains a terrible idea , but if either the Republican-controlled House and Senate want to make an actual case for war , then that is their prerogative . But vote on it . Because the Obama administration has already gone down a dangerous path wherein the executive branch can unilaterally carry out virtually any war it wants without any official input from Congress . Given the GOP's newfound hatred of executive power, which the party seem to have conveniently forgotten was pioneered during every Republican administration since Nixon , you'd think Washington's new majority might want to take this tiny step of debating and voting on the Isis war , as is their own constitutional duty . Republicans would do well to use the president's own words against him . As Barack Obama himself told the Boston Globe back in 2007 :. The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation . Since virtually the entire US intelligence community agrees that Isis, no matter how awful and heinous the group may be, does not imminently threaten the mainland United States , maybe Congress can start off the new year by doing its job and actually voting on something required of them months ago .
A:
The holiday headlines blared without a hint of distrust:"End of War" and "Mission Ends" and "U.S  formally ends the war in Afghanistan", as the US government and Nato celebrated the alleged end of the longest war in American history Except, that is, when you read past the first paragraph