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 But not half as astonished as when they discovered the following, unpublished facts .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: The hapless, harmless Palestinian leader? January 15 marks a decade since Mahmoud Abbas became the Palestinian president , during which time the goals he claims to espouse not only remain unrealised, but are more remote than ever . He is still in office despite his term ending six years ago; the democratic process that brought him to power no longer in existence . He speaks of his people's human rights while his Palestinian Authority actively curtails them . He claims to champion their national rights while collaborating unconditionally with the country that denies them . Abbas' image as a hapless, harmless figure deflects from the cunning and ruthlessness of someone whose primary concern, like the Middle East's other autocrats, seems to be his longevity . The fact that he plays ball with the West and Israel somehow makes this okay . Where other Arab strongmen nurture an image of power to maintain it , he relies on being seen as an underdog . But this illusion, which has traditionally served Abbas well, no longer extends to his people . Many think he and the PA serve their own interests and those of Israel, rather than those of the Palestinians . According to a poll last month, 55 percent believe that the PA has become "a burden on the Palestinian people" . Regarding the presidency, Abbas has consistently lagged in opinion polls behind his Fatah colleague, Marwan Barghouti . Since Israel's last Gaza invasion, he also runs behind Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh . Is it mere coincidence, then, that Abbas has been lacklustre in campaigning for Barghouti's release from Israeli jail; or in pursuing and implementing national unity deals with Hamas that call for elections? Since the signing of the latest reconciliation agreement in April, Abbas has at various times threatened to end it, and has been openly adversarial towards Hamas . Elections that were due within six months never happened , so he remains unchallenged - this has gone largely unnoticed . The PA - which is meant to safeguard Palestinian rights- serially abuses them . Human Rights Watch has documented "police beatings and arbitrary arrests of demonstrators", "excessive force", "repressing critical news reporting and demonstrations", "suppressing dissenting views", and "serious rights abuses, including credible allegations of torture" , for which "no security officials were convicted" . As such, the PA is not only failing to curb Israeli abuses, but is busy perpetrating its own, all under Abbas' watch . The PA has garnered a reputation among Palestinians for managing the occupation rather than striving to end it . One way it does this is "security coordination" with Israel , which Abbas described last year as "sacred" despite the vast majority of Palestinians opposing it . Such coordination serves Israel by enabling it to subcontract its occupation, and serves the PA by helping it suppress internal dissent . It certainly does not benefit the Palestinian people . Abbas and his foreign minister have made grotesque assurances that as long as he is president, he will not allow an uprising against Israel . So the PA, which is supposed to be part of a national liberation struggle, is willing to put down an uprising by its own people against their subjugation . This is nothing short of betrayal . For more than 20 years, the PA has participated in a "peace process" that has greatly entrenched Israeli control . Abbas himself was an architect of the disastrous Oslo Accords . The occupied territories are now so colonised and fragmented that a viable Palestinian state is widely considered impossible . Yet ,  Abbas still wants to negotiate, despite Israel being clearly opposed to Palestinian self-determination . What, then, is the point of negotiating? Perhaps to preserve the privileged elites to which the PA and the "peace process" gave birth . After all ,  allegations of corruption and nepotism, including Abbas and his family, are nothing new . With the help of international aid, the PA is the largest employer of Palestinians, much like other autocracies that encourage public dependence on the state to avoid mass unrest . A power imbalance alone cannot explain Abbas' policy choices regarding Israel . He opposes armed resistance, and has gone to great lengths to disarm militants in the West Bank . However ,  he also opposes peaceful forms of resistance, including the increasingly effective Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement . Furthermore ,  it took the PA more than two years since Palestine's upgraded UN status to apply to join the International Criminal Court, despite repeated threats to do so amid constant Israeli provocations . That Abbas finally relented may not only, or necessarily, be about losing patience with Israel, but about assuaging mounting Palestinian anger at his procrastination in applying to the ICC . Meanwhile, he says he will keep pushing for a UN Security Council resolution calling for a deadline to end Israel's occupation , despite the certainty of repeated failure by US veto . Abbas seems to be attempting a balancing act . He wants to prove to Israel, and his western and Arab backers, that he is their best Palestinian partner, safe in the knowledge that they will not accept Hamas rule, but mindful not to suffer the same fate as Yasser Arafat once he was no longer deemed useful or reliable . However ,  his recent, uncharacteristic defiance against Israel reflects a need to stop his flagging domestic popularity turning into an uprising against him and the PA . Abbas has nothing to show his people after 10 years as president, and at least another decade as part of the "peace process" . He remains in office because of, not despite, Israel's occupation and Palestinian disunity .
A:
January 15 marks a decade since Mahmoud Abbas became the Palestinian president during which time the goals he claims to espouse not only remain unrealised, but are more remote than ever