Part 1. Definition
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.
Part 2. 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 But not half as astonished as when they discovered the following, unpublished facts .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 .
Answer: 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"
Part 3. Exercise
Hollywood loves Obama, but does Obama love it back? Hollywood loves Barack Obama and it has expressed this in every way it knows how, from celebrity endorsements and campaign appearances to huge donations . In the 2012 presidential race, show biz folks gave Obama more than six million dollars, five times as much as Romney got . It has even been announced that a biopic of Obama's first date with Michelle--dinner and a Spike Lee movie--is on the way . Without spoiling the plot I can reveal that it has a happy ending . So Hollywood loves Obama and , not surprisingly, Obama loves it right back . In fact ,  he is an admirer of its role in the world . "Believe it or not, entertainment is part of our American diplomacy," Obama told an A-list gathering of movie stars and film executives at DreamWorks, in November 2013 . "It is part of what makes us exceptional, part of what makes us such a world power . Hundreds of millions of people may never set foot in the United States, but thanks to you, they've experienced a small part of what makes our country special . They've learned something about our values . We have shaped a world culture through you...in a way that has made the world better." This is what is known as a matter of opinion . A dissenting view is held by hundreds of millions of Muslims who consider the incursions of the American cinema to be a dangerous and despicable form of Zionist-Crusader cultural imperialism . Obama's speech to Hollywood will not disabuse them of this belief . ".[Foreigners] might not know the Gettysburg Address," Obama said , "but if they're watching some old movie, maybe "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," or "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," or "Will and Grace" and "Modern Family," they've had a front-row seat to our march towards progress, even if their own nations haven't made that progress yet . And young people in countries all around the world suddenly make a connection and have an affinity to people who look don't like them and maybe originally they might have been fearful of, and now suddenly they say, oh, this person is like me -- which is one of the powers of art , but that's what you transmit." It would be comforting to think that the president was simply flattering his audience . If he actually believes this , his lack of sophistication about the Middle East makes George W  Bush look like Lawrence of Arabia . "Mary Tyler Moore"? Women aren't even allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia . They are forced to wear "modest" clothing down to their ankles in Iran . In most of the region, a woman who disobeys her husband or talks back to him faces a beating at best, usually with the hearty approval of the wife's family father and brothers . "Will and Grace"? Homosexuality is a capital crime throughout most of the Arab world because it is seen as an offense against Allah and the family . The only gay bars in the Arab world and Iran are on the windows of prison cells . "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner"? A Muslim girl crazy enough to bring home an infidel fiance is inviting a sequel: "Guess Who's Having a Funeral"? Parents, clergy and community elders in the Middle East are not entertained, let alone edified, by Hollywood values . They are horrified by what they see as a godless foreign assault on their children, their religion and their way of life . In most places even G-rated films are considered transgressive . They can be found mostly via under-the-counter bootleggers or downloaded in secret . And they are . Their impact on young people is not the liberation Obama imagines , however . Unmarried men do not have unfettered access to members of the opposite sex and many find explicit depictions to be frustrating and humiliating . In some, they even inspire a militant puritanical Islam that makes posthumous sex the ultimate reward for killing infidels . Unmarried young women, lacking even that outlet, need to be careful and obedient to the code of conduct . A girl caught trying to emulate the tamest teenage movie role model puts her life in danger . My point is not that Hollywood is wrong to make movies and television shows that reflect American social values and suit the American audience . And I certainly don't expect the president to inform his biggest boosters that their creations ignite resentment, hostility and holy war . I do hope, though, that the president and his advisers understand this:"Will and Grace," "Mary Tyler Moore" and even the new Obama biopic may win Oscars and Emmys, but in a struggle for hearts and minds in a region where cutting- edge refers to swords, not cinema, Hollywood is not a strategic American asset .
Answer:
Hollywood loves Barack Obama