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 But not half as astonished as when they discovered the following, unpublished facts .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: CIA interrogations report: New Congress must tackle how to get intelligence right. As I read news reports detailing the Senate Committee Report on the CIA interrogation program after the September 2001 terrorist attacks , I concluded there are several recurring problems to this latest effort to govern our national intelligence agencies . As an old man, I have had the opportunity to have first-hand exposure to how complex it is for Congress or even the White House to assert control over these vital intelligence activities . After there were revelations in the 60's that the CIA had engaged in a variety of activities that were highly questionable including efforts to kill Fidel Castro and others , the Carter administration reacted and went through the kind of political process that many are urging should be done today . In an attempt to purge the agency of its tendency to use nefarious individuals to carry out some of its covert projects, the CIA was directed to refuse to associate with any persons who could not meet the test of good character . One CIA officer told me how absurd that directive was . "We are trying to get people to betray their governments and to lie and cheat on our behalf. You cannot expect us to find those people in the front pew at the local churches." Perhaps the directive was well-intentioned but it made no sense . Richard Helms, the CIA head from 1966 to 1973, whom I knew well and admired greatly, told me of his personal problems when he was indicted by the Carter Justice Department for perjury . In testimony he gave to the Congress, Helms denied under oath his agency had been involved in the overthrow of the Allende government in Chile, an action ordered by President Nixon . Helms told me he was following instructions he had been given repeatedly by various Senators including such powerful men as Senators Richard Russell and Walter George to the effect that if he were ever asked at an open hearing a question the answer to which "would put any of our people at risk" he should feel free to protect the secrets in whatever manner he wished . Of course Helms knew of many instances when he and others in the Agency had relied on that authority . Helms was defended by the powerful Washington lawyer, Edward Bennett Williams and the case against Helms was quickly resolved when Williams explained to the Justice Department his plan to have Helms take the stand and recite all the covert programs that had been protected by various forms of prevarications by intelligence officials . Of course no such trial in public made any sense and the danger to ongoing intelligence activities of testimony such as Williams would have had Helms provide was so great the ill- advised indictment of Helms resulted only in a slap on the wrist . Williams made a deal in which Helms pled guilty to a misdemeanor with no punishment . Later ,  President Ronald Reagan gave Helms the National Intelligence Medal as an obvious act of apology . Perjury is not to be condoned and lying before the Congress is criminal conduct . But the intelligence world involves subtle issues . If we want to have a major intelligence effort , there are clear costs to be accepted . One of them is that much of the necessary supervision by Congress has to be done with deft caution . It can hardly be conducted in open hearings . Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard Law Professor and prominent civil libertarian, contends torture to save lives should be permitted as long as there are rigorous procedural safeguards . He points out the Israelis have used torture for years with apparent success . Getting information from unwilling prisoners cannot be done without some risks to civilized process . It can be a dirty game . I once visited Vice President Walter Mondale at his White House office where he served under President Carter from 1977 to 1981 . His desk was piled high with documents he said were mainly reports from the CIA . He volunteered his frustration at the then weaknesses at the CIA . He told me he had come to regret he had been such a vigorous supporter of the gutting of that agency that followed the suggestions of the so-called Church Committee on which Mondale had served as a Senator . His comment was an isolated one and I merely listened . But the effects of the Church Committee recommendations were damaging to the CIA and the remedial work took years . Every forty years we may have to endure periodic reports like those produced under Senators Church and Feinstein that represent well intentioned reviews of the intelligence community . The suggested reforms speak of following our sense of justice and fairness and civility . The problem is obvious : Our enemies do not play fair and war is Hell . Any reforms of the intelligence universe cannot easily be effected . The idea of a transparent intelligence agency is an inherent contradiction . Moreover how can Congress talk openly of reforms without damaging our intelligence efforts? And politicians are among those least likely to be willing to accept the secrecy that is at the core of any well managed intelligence agency . Can we imagine a Congress that can keep the secrets? The new flurry of attacks on the intelligence community -- harmful and unnecessary-- will not have any more lasting impact than did the indictment of Helms or the work of the Church Committee . But there should be some quiet and thoughtful debate within our Congress about how it can supervise these vital intelligence programs . After all ,  our national intelligence work is existential .
Solution:
As I read news reports detailing the Senate Committee Report on the CIA interrogation program after the September 2001 terrorist attacks