Once I had a better beat, I needed to have an even better one. And somewhere in that climbing, I lost sight of, sort of, my moral and ethical underpinnings.

I feel like I delivered a blow, an unfortunate blow to a profession that not only did I personally love doing but that I value for society.

I used to walk around saying that I'm just another black man without a college degree.

When we report stories, we don't just want to talk to people who did the right thing. We want to talk to people who did the wrong thing.

If they're all so brilliant and I'm such an affirmative-action hire, how come they didn't catch me?

It's hard to say what role race really played in my case.

Some people it seems to me would like for me to crawl in a hole and disappear forever. That's just not in my nature.