Who can we trust to tell us the truth?
Once in another tumultuous era, as the Vietnam War, Watergate, the Civil Rights and Women's Liberation Movements were challenging America to its core, my dad and I would watch Walter Cronkite, a man he trusted to tell us what was happening.
Dad, a politically conservative career military man, cared a lot about this country and was determined to make sure he was well informed.
He listened to the radio every morning, read the paper every afternoon, and watched the news on TV every evening before sitting down to dinner, or at some point, he would almost always launch a debate about what was happening in the world.
He'd pound the table and say something like "Don't those Vietnam war protesters know it's my country, right or wrong?"
And I'd react with something like "But, Dad, don't they have a point?
I mean, what are we doing in Vietnam?"
And he'd puff up and get red in the face and respond with something like "I can't believe I'm hearing those words out of the mouth of my own daughter."
(Laughter) Our arguments could get so loud, my brothers and sisters would sometimes pick up their plates to eat somewhere else.
Dad really liked to win these arguments.
But even when he didn't, he'd respect my opinion.
Sometimes, he would even say, "Ann, I don't always agree with you, but I'd still vote for you for President."
(Laughter) (Applause) There were times, however, usually when Walter was off and someone else was substituting, when Dad would hear something on the evening news that would alarm him far more than the stories of the day.
All it would take was one phrase, a changed tone of voice, a raised eyebrow, or even just a single word that struck Dad as opinionated, and he was offended.
Suddenly, he was shaking his finger at the television set, shouting, "Stop telling me what to think!
Just give me the facts!"
And then he would look over at me and say, "See, Ann?
He's disrespecting us, trying to tell us what to think as if we were stupid and can't make up our own minds."
Boy, if my dad could see what counts for some of TV journalism today.
(Laughter) (Applause) He would want to be right up here with me, standing right next to me, suggesting an idea that might be worth spreading.
Journalism is only trustworthy when it dependably offers accurate, verifiable facts, not bias and speculation, and not for ratings, circulation or clicks (Applause) or for any financial or political motivation, but with one motive and one motive only: to reveal the truth for the greater public good.
The bridge to trust is truth, and it's time to make things right.
(Applause) (Cheers) What do we define as truth?
Well, lately I've wondered if we've all gotten a little confused about what truth is and what it isn't.
People ask, "Whose truth?"
uncertain if objective, absolute truth even exists, thinking, as some philosophers have argued, that as it requires human judgment, truth is ultimately subjective.
As others see it, reporters can't be fair and unbiased, because being humans, of course they have opinions and so should at least tell us what those opinions are.
Other people, who've noticed objective facts now seem less influential than emotion and personal beliefs in shaping public opinion, have gone so far as to say we live in a post-truth era.
To all this, my dad would say, "Balderdash!"
(Laughter) He was a Navy man who didn't like to swear - go figure.
I, however, don't seem to have that problem.
(Laughter) (Applause) So maybe I should just call it what it is: FUBAR - Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.
(Applause) (Cheers) I appreciate philosophers, but not being one, I can't settle the "Is truth subjective or objective?" debate.
Though it does seem to be an objective, verifiable fact that I'm standing on this stage and that I'm a little nervous, worried that I may have overdressed, and I'm wishing that I wore more comfortable shoes.
(Laughter) There is actually compelling evidence that humans can be fair and impartial, not just from the ancient biblical story of Solomon, but from the known science, which tell us that fairness along with empathy are fundamental human traits, deeply rooted in our genetics.
If it wasn't for these traits, we might not even be able to live amongst each other.
And as a reporter, I know you can get in so deep, listening to and documenting all sides of the story, searching for the truth, that you don't even know what your own opinion is.
I know because I've done it.
And because we as a species cannot live long, cannot long endure without objective facts, unelaborated and unvarnished, it can be argued they still and will always matter.
We need truth.
Perhaps especially from journalism, which, when practiced well, can help us see each other and ourselves more honestly, tell us what we need to know to be smarter citizens, show us how to live healthier and more connected lives, and even warn us when we need to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe from danger.
Post-truth?
Really?
We do seem to be experiencing a loss of credibility, a demise in the face of a rising tide of lies, in our ability to trust what we're told are objective facts are either objective or facts.
Where does the information that's sowing this distrust and confusion come from?
And what is it doing to us and the quality of our relationships with each other?
Instead of a Walter Cronkite today, i.e., someone who a significant number of people trust, we are exposed to an overwhelming number of sources of information on multiple platforms, working around the clock to get our attention, some motivated to purposely manipulate us with lies and propaganda, some inept, shelling out incomplete, misleading or poorly-sourced information and some doing exemplary reporting but still doubted almost as much for any mistakes or perceived bias.
The net impact of all of this is a chaotic overload of competing, conflicting and confusing information.
And while our brains are truly excellent at collecting data, we're not always so great at remembering where we got it.
So what we learn from a trusted source can easily get jumbled up in our brains with what we read on a website, saw in a tweet or a video posted on Facebook or heard from a pundit speculating on cable television.
If you ever saw the David Bowie movie "The Man Who Fell to Earth" - I sometimes feel we're all in that scene in which he's watching a huge wall of TV monitors, each one tuned to a different channel, and suddenly, he can't take it anymore, and he starts yelling, "Get out of my mind, all of you!"
Bet you didn't expect a David Bowie reference today.
(Laughter) Perhaps never before have so many consumed so much news and yet have been so woefully misinformed.
When, in this swirling chaos, can we be certain the information we need or want to know is accurate?
The internet is an abyss as well as a wonderland.
It mirrors the darkest dark in us and the brightest light of humanity and all there is in between.
And because of it, no matter what comes next in journalism, there now seems no doubt that you and me and every one of us must become a better editor.
So here, from one journalist's playbook, are some tried and true strategies that might up your game.
Focus on defense and develop a skill for listening to both sides of a story even if it pains you.
Realize - (Applause) Realize virtually every source wants a story told as he or she sees it.
That means even seemingly good, honest people can tell you just the facts that support their point of view, sometimes leaving out key details.
They might even distort the facts, purposely misdirect you or even out-and-out lie.
Ask yourself, "What's the motivating force for this source to tell the story?"
And could that motivation be influencing the story that you're getting?
Then ask, "Is this source in a position, having been an eyewitness or having some expertise, to even know what is true?"
Or is he or she wasting your time with speculation?
And because even eyewitnesses and experts can get it wrong, you have to seek out sources from other points of view and then critically examine their motivations and credibility as well.
Rarely is the truth one-sided; it tends to be nuanced.
(Applause) And it's not always fair.
But you may never find it unless you search fairly, with a mind that is truly open.
And then, even if you think you have a balanced view of the story, you have to reexamine the facts and motivations and reputations of your sources one more time to make sure you weren't played or manipulated.
And if your sources are anonymous, you better check and double check again.
It is exhausting, but after this Sherlock Holmes-ing, you usually get the facts that people need to know to make up their own minds.
This is Journalism 101, how we're trained in journalism schools to work in defense of truth.
Why are even long-trusted news organizations that know how to gather the facts vulnerable to attacks on their credibility?
Journalism tends to be vulnerable because of the enormous power of credible information.
When we believe the same story, we can find a common purpose and work together.
This is what has made humans an unstoppable force throughout our history.
The historian Yuval Harari suggests this is why we are the only human species to survive when once there were at least six and why we've risen from the middle of the animal kingdom, once huddled around fires in fear of being eaten, to now the top, having the power to decide what species live or die, and how we ourselves will evolve from here.
This power to move people is why everyone wants to control the narrative, why truth is fought over and is the victim, usually the first victim, especially in war.
It's why journalists, as messengers of truth, are physically attacked in some parts of the world and even killed.
At the same time, unfortunately, journalism is not like mathematics, in which two plus two is always four.
Journalism is by humans, about humans and for humans and so is inherently as fallible as humans and as vulnerable to criticism.
Add to that, the job is to ask prying questions, to push past the norms of good manners for honest answers, and then to race to report stories that can be controversial, embarrassing or infuriating.
If you want to be popular, don't be a journalist.
(Laughter) Of course, it doesn't help journalism's credibility when it's under constant attack by political leaders in the United States and around the world.
(Applause) It doesn't help that emerging technologies have eliminated or diminished hundreds of local newspapers around the country and have failed, so far, to replace them with anything close to the same quality and range of credible reporting.
(Applause) But perhaps what is making journalism most vulnerable is that in this industry shift, some media executives, struggling to keep making money for their corporate owners, are pressuring journalists to make choices that weaken their credibility.
The pressure for profits is one reason we have witnessed the stunning growth of openly biased news coverage, especially on cable television, where not everyone who is telling us the news is actually a journalist.
Some are advocates with political agendas, some are activists, some are former political operatives, and some are what were once called "opinionaters," people whose profession is to give their opinions and theories.
So now I'm the one yelling at the television set: "Just give me the facts!
Stop trying to tell us what to think!"
(Applause) Opinion, thoughtful and supported with facts, has an important place in journalism, but it is not news.
Thus, allowing viewers to think it's news, to fail to differentiate it, is fundamentally dishonest.
News is not left or right; it's based on facts that are either right or wrong.
(Applause) And for the record, ranting from any point of view is not journalism.
Besides, it has serious side effects: it makes you look a little nuts.
(Laughter) In the quest for profits, corporate owners are punching holes through the long-standing wall protecting journalists from corporate meddling.
In some companies, the wall is crumbling.
I have heard a request from corporate executives to kill a news story.
I have seen a media company's advertising side try to get products placed in a news broadcast.
In some companies, the wall appears to be collapsing.
Recently, the nation's largest broadcaster, Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which owns and operates more than 190 stations, engaged in corporate manipulation when it required dozens of anchors to read a script the company had provided.
The push for profits is also pressuring journalists to muddy their judgment with worries about reaching clicks, ratings and circulation goals.
This can affect the decisions they make about what stories to cover, what interviews to do and how headlines and teasers should be written.
The public is not stupid.
It can sense these motives in the work and the hype.
It knows the truth is in trouble.
How do we make things right and defend our access to accurate, verifiable reporting, which according to our nation's Founding Fathers, our democracy needs to survive?
We need a renaissance in journalism.
(Applause) And it is actually possible that it is already beginning.
We can see some of our nation's newspapers and magazines, in spite of everything, leading a rebirth, doubling down on serious, competitive and groundbreaking shoe-leather journalism, working to tell all the nuances of the stories they're covering, including both domestic and foreign.
Our citizens are awakening to the reasons journalism is vital in a democracy.
They're reminded by the movies "Spotlight" and "The Post," and they're increasingly demanding and supporting quality work, and in some cases, they are even donating to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
And journalists can be seen increasingly standing up to corporate pressures, including at the Denver Post and at Sinclair TV stations.
They're also pushing across platforms to do smarter and more impactful reporting and balanced stories.
And in some newsrooms, editors are reviving investigative reporting.
(Applause) Credibility lost is never fully regained.
But what survives can be protected, and new bridges can be built by the journalists still to come.
For that to happen, for news organizations to better endure attacks on their credibility, journalists must be able to work with one motive: the public good.
Corporate owners and executives must know how to stay in their lane and out of influencing what and how stories are covered.
Investors and advertisers will need to stop pressuring journalists to be their pot of gold and do what's right for this country: fund excellence and get out of the way.
Editors and executive producers will have to fight harder against the blurring between opinion and news until all the stories we need to know, not just the ones or the one that might increase ratings and clicks.
(Applause) Technologists should realize they are not journalists; they are platform creators and owners and should hire solid reporters and then leave them alone and make those reporters great forces for good.
(Applause) And news consumers, if you want the facts, subscribe.
(Applause) Read newspapers and perhaps ask, Why would journalism that's any good be free?
(Applause) Why do any one of us routinely put up with baseless opinion, speculation and propaganda?
And why do we waste so much time on the Kardashians?
(Laughter) (Cheers) (Applause) Too much sugar just makes you fat.
(Laughter) Journalists, keep going and stay humble.
We may know a little about a lot, but few of us know enough about anything to have an opinion that matters.
So we dig for the facts that do matter, from all sides, and then fight like hell to tell them.
And potential future journalists, your country needs you.
Journalism is war, a fight every day for truth.
And it takes more than being curious and knowing how to write or blog or shoot a video or ask questions.
It takes courage, and most of all, it takes integrity.
Because journalism is only as good as the people who practice it and their willingness to stand up and fight for the stories that mean something.
You will make mistakes; we all do.
But with practice and instincts you may not know you have, you will learn to make less of them.
You will face a lack of resources, you will be denied access, people will refuse to give you interviews, editors and executive producers will give you impossible deadlines and not enough time or space to tell your stories.
This is emotionally hard and sometimes around-the-clock work.
It might cause people to hate you.
It might put you in danger or expose you to trauma that might give you PTSD.
This I know from experience.
But after nearly 40 years at this, I still stand here before you and can honestly say with all my heart: journalism is a noble calling, a way to serve people and respond like an EMT or an emergency room doctor in a crisis with information they may need.
If you work for the people and not for those who pay your checks, you will make the right choices about who to interview, what to ask and how to tell your stories, and this will bring your news organizations value that will make even your bosses happy.
Be incorruptible.
Do it with a pure motive, earnestly, without bias and expectations.
Do it even though you may never know the impact of your stories.
Do it even if you know you will be criticized.
But get it right, which you will find is far more important than getting it first.
Attribute, (Applause) attribute whenever possible.
Check, check, and then double check the facts.
Ruthlessly edit out any word or phrase or tone in your work that could get in the way of people making up their own minds.
This is how we build trust, by working to be worthy of it.
It is time to lift truth off its knees, prize it, cherish it, defend it and watch it rise along with all of us.
Thank you.
(Applause) (Cheers)
What is so special about the human brain?
Why is it that we study other animals instead of them studying us?
What does a human brain have or do that no other brain does?
When I became interested in these questions about 10 years ago, scientists thought they knew what different brains were made of.
Though it was based on very little evidence, many scientists thought that all mammalian brains, including the human brain, were made in the same way, with a number of neurons that was always proportional to the size of the brain.
This means that two brains of the same size, like these two, with a respectable 400 grams, should have similar numbers of neurons.
Now, if neurons are the functional information processing units of the brain, then the owners of these two brains should have similar cognitive abilities.
And yet, one is a chimp, and the other is a cow.
Now maybe cows have a really rich internal mental life and are so smart that they choose not to let us realize it, but we eat them.
I think most people will agree that chimps are capable of much more complex, elaborate and flexible behaviors than cows are.
So this is a first indication that the "all brains are made the same way" scenario is not quite right.
But let's play along.
If all brains were made the same way and you were to compare animals with brains of different sizes, larger brains should always have more neurons than smaller brains, and the larger the brain, the more cognitively able its owner should be.
So the largest brain around should also be the most cognitively able.
And here comes the bad news: Our brain, not the largest one around.
It seems quite vexing.
Our brain weighs between 1.2 and 1.5 kilos, but elephant brains weigh between four and five kilos, and whale brains can weigh up to nine kilos, which is why scientists used to resort to saying that our brain must be special to explain our cognitive abilities.
It must be really extraordinary, an exception to the rule.
Theirs may be bigger, but ours is better, and it could be better, for example, in that it seems larger than it should be, with a much larger cerebral cortex than we should have for the size of our bodies.
So that would give us extra cortex to do more interesting things than just operating the body.
That's because the size of the brain usually follows the size of the body.
So the main reason for saying that our brain is larger than it should be actually comes from comparing ourselves to great apes.
Gorillas can be two to three times larger than we are, so their brains should also be larger than ours, but instead it's the other way around.
Our brain is three times larger than a gorilla brain.
The human brain also seems special in the amount of energy that it uses.
Although it weighs only two percent of the body, it alone uses 25 percent of all the energy that your body requires to run per day.
That's 500 calories out of a total of 2,000 calories, just to keep your brain working.
So the human brain is larger than it should be, it uses much more energy than it should, so it's special.
And this is where the story started to bother me.
In biology, we look for rules that apply to all animals and to life in general, so why should the rules of evolution apply to everybody else but not to us?
Maybe the problem was with the basic assumption that all brains are made in the same way.
Maybe two brains of a similar size can actually be made of very different numbers of neurons.
Maybe a very large brain does not necessarily have more neurons than a more modest-sized brain.
Maybe the human brain actually has the most neurons of any brain, regardless of its size, especially in the cerebral cortex.
So this to me became the important question to answer: how many neurons does the human brain have, and how does that compare to other animals?
Now, you may have heard or read somewhere that we have 100 billion neurons, so 10 years ago, I asked my colleagues if they knew where this number came from.
But nobody did.
I've been digging through the literature for the original reference for that number, and I could never find it.
It seems that nobody had actually ever counted the number of neurons in the human brain, or in any other brain for that matter.
So I came up with my own way to count cells in the brain, and it essentially consists of dissolving that brain into soup.
It works like this: You take a brain, or parts of that brain, and you dissolve it in detergent, which destroys the cell membranes but keeps the cell nuclei intact, so you end up with a suspension of free nuclei that looks like this, like a clear soup.
This soup contains all the nuclei that once were a mouse brain.
Now, the beauty of a soup is that because it is soup, you can agitate it and make those nuclei be distributed homogeneously in the liquid, so that now by looking under the microscope at just four or five samples of this homogeneous solution, you can count nuclei, and therefore tell how many cells that brain had.
It's simple, it's straightforward, and it's really fast.
So we've used that method to count neurons in dozens of different species so far, and it turns out that all brains are not made the same way.
Take rodents and primates, for instance: In larger rodent brains, the average size of the neuron increases, so the brain inflates very rapidly and gains size much faster than it gains neurons.
But primate brains gain neurons without the average neuron becoming any larger, which is a very economical way to add neurons to your brain.
The result is that a primate brain will always have more neurons than a rodent brain of the same size, and the larger the brain, the larger this difference will be.
Well, what about our brain then?
We found that we have, on average, 86 billion neurons, 16 billion of which are in the cerebral cortex, and if you consider that the cerebral cortex is the seat of functions like awareness and logical and abstract reasoning, and that 16 billion is the most neurons that any cortex has, I think this is the simplest explanation for our remarkable cognitive abilities.
But just as important is what the 86 billion neurons mean.
Because we found that the relationship between the size of the brain and its number of neurons could be described mathematically, we could calculate what a human brain would look like if it was made like a rodent brain.
So, a rodent brain with 86 billion neurons would weigh 36 kilos.
That's not possible.
A brain that huge would be crushed by its own weight, and this impossible brain would go in the body of 89 tons.
I don't think it looks like us.
So this brings us to a very important conclusion already, which is that we are not rodents.
The human brain is not a large rat brain.
Compared to a rat, we might seem special, yes, but that's not a fair comparison to make, given that we know that we are not rodents.
We are primates, so the correct comparison is to other primates.
And there, if you do the math, you find that a generic primate with 86 billion neurons would have a brain of about 1.2 kilos, which seems just right, in a body of some 66 kilos, which in my case is exactly right, which brings us to a very unsurprising but still incredibly important conclusion: I am a primate.
And all of you are primates.
And so was Darwin.
I love to think that Darwin would have really appreciated this.
His brain, like ours, was made in the image of other primate brains.
So the human brain may be remarkable, yes, but it is not special in its number of neurons.
It is just a large primate brain.
I think that's a very humbling and sobering thought that should remind us of our place in nature.
Why does it cost so much energy, then?
Well, other people have figured out how much energy the human brain and that of other species costs, and now that we knew how many neurons each brain was made of, we could do the math.
And it turns out that both human and other brains cost about the same, an average of six calories per billion neurons per day.
So the total energetic cost of a brain is a simple, linear function of its number of neurons, and it turns out that the human brain costs just as much energy as you would expect.
So the reason why the human brain costs so much energy is simply because it has a huge number of neurons, and because we are primates with many more neurons for a given body size than any other animal, the relative cost of our brain is large, but just because we're primates, not because we're special.
Last question, then: how did we come by this remarkable number of neurons, and in particular, if great apes are larger than we are, why don't they have a larger brain than we do, with more neurons?
When we realized how much expensive it is to have a lot of neurons in the brain, I figured, maybe there's a simple reason.
They just can't afford the energy for both a large body and a large number of neurons.
So we did the math.
We calculated on the one hand how much energy a primate gets per day from eating raw foods, and on the other hand, how much energy a body of a certain size costs and how much energy a brain of a certain number of neurons costs, and we looked for the combinations of body size and number of brain neurons that a primate could afford if it ate a certain number of hours per day.
And what we found is that because neurons are so expensive, there is a tradeoff between body size and number of neurons.
So a primate that eats eight hours per day can afford at most 53 billion neurons, but then its body cannot be any bigger than 25 kilos.
To weigh any more than that, it has to give up neurons.
So it's either a large body or a large number of neurons.
When you eat like a primate, you can't afford both.
One way out of this metabolic limitation would be to spend even more hours per day eating, but that gets dangerous, and past a certain point, it's just not possible.
Gorillas and orangutans, for instance, afford about 30 billion neurons by spending eight and a half hours per day eating, and that seems to be about as much as they can do.
Nine hours of feeding per day seems to be the practical limit for a primate.
What about us?
With our 86 billion neurons and 60 to 70 kilos of body mass, we should have to spend over nine hours per day every single day feeding, which is just not feasible.
If we ate like a primate, we should not be here.
How did we get here, then?
Well, if our brain costs just as much energy as it should, and if we can't spend every waking hour of the day feeding, then the only alternative, really, is to somehow get more energy out of the same foods.
And remarkably, that matches exactly what our ancestors are believed to have invented one and a half million years ago, when they invented cooking.
To cook is to use fire to pre-digest foods outside of your body.
Cooked foods are softer, so they're easier to chew and to turn completely into mush in your mouth, so that allows them to be completely digested and absorbed in your gut, which makes them yield much more energy in much less time.
So cooking frees time for us to do much more interesting things with our day and with our neurons than just thinking about food, looking for food, and gobbling down food all day long.
So because of cooking, what once was a major liability, this large, dangerously expensive brain with a lot of neurons, could now become a major asset, now that we could both afford the energy for a lot of neurons and the time to do interesting things with them.
So I think this explains why the human brain grew to become so large so fast in evolution, all of the while remaining just a primate brain.
With this large brain now affordable by cooking, we went rapidly from raw foods to culture, agriculture, civilization, grocery stores, electricity, refrigerators, all of those things that nowadays allow us to get all the energy we need for the whole day in a single sitting at your favorite fast food joint.
So what once was a solution now became the problem, and ironically, we look for the solution in raw food.
So what is the human advantage?
What is it that we have that no other animal has?
My answer is that we have the largest number of neurons in the cerebral cortex, and I think that's the simplest explanation for our remarkable cognitive abilities.
And what is it that we do that no other animal does, and which I believe was fundamental to allow us to reach that large, largest number of neurons in the cortex?
In two words, we cook.
No other animal cooks its food.
Only humans do.
And I think that's how we got to become human.
Studying the human brain changed the way I think about food.
I now look at my kitchen, and I bow to it, and I thank my ancestors for coming up with the invention that probably made us humans.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)