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 think people can learn from my experience - you know, any young people who are under pressure, whether you work on Wall Street or you work in a factory in Alabama, and young journalists.

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

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.

People in the news media after I got caught said how could you have not caught this guy? He had 50 corrections in four years. That's a lot of corrections. Well what they failed to look at is how many stories there were and out of 700 plus stories, 50 corrections is not a high amount.

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.

I believe my own demons would have caught up with me regardless of my race and regardless of whether I worked at 'The Times.