[Music] welcome thanks for having me to be here and to uh this uh little power to truth series that we uh started recording recently uh tell us some more about your work at the New York Times and sort of what kind of truths you brought to try to empower them sure well I join joined the New York Times in 2006 and at first I was on the I I was a business school graduate uh from the Yale School of Management and at first I was on the advertising and marketing beat covering advertising and um but I had said to the business editor you know I know something about Finance Wall Street I've been to business school I'd love to cover Wall Street and he said you know we don't need any more people in that group but then in 2008 the day after bear Stern's collapsed he came over and said think we could use another person on the Financial beat it's really important by the way because I love when I find reporters who actually have an MBA uh be because wherever I go it's like if they have some education they know a bit of the stuff we teach here at the business school that helps a lot for policy makers and for reporters so it's great to find graduates of Business Schools in some of these areas thank you yeah it made a huge difference for me because here I was jumping into one of the most important stories in Financial history the 2008 financial crisis but I had you know no sources really on the beat because I was just starting be Sterns had just collaps I hadn't built up trust with people or whatever um but I did know Financial Concepts from business school so really having that education what to ask right enabled me to jump in ask tough questions not be Hoodwinked and I actually ended up emerging as one of the more um hard-hitting reporters because in fact since I didn't have those social ties or previous ties to sources I just had get your knowledge from them I didn't get my knowledge from them I just had my MBA studies and way of thinking I went in I asked tough questions and actually managed to uncover a lot of things that were really important information about what had gone wrong so it's really amazing how that allows you to uncover truth when you know what questions to ask you know where to look right and so the education really matters because a lot of the time if if an excess reporter will just become potentially a mouthpiece for and so the truth becomes whatever the sources tell you and then you don't know quite where to dig and what to ask and how to frame for the readers and so it's really it's really important but underappreciated in the media oh for sure and one of my favorite um MBA classes at Yale was an accounting class where we actually we had there was someone from PWC who was in their forensic unit who came in and taught us how to find financial fraud yes and learning about some of the biggest accounting frauds and also thinking about what are the conditions under which someone can do fraud and how are they incentivized to do it really helped me again um not just the forensic right doing the forensic and understanding the rationale because you know the way of fraud happens one time is never the same way the next time but if you understand the incentive structure the strategy that way of thinking then you can you can look to the new tactics yeah so I I think that really well-informed well educated media that can sort of write well explain well ask the right questions is just so important and then you know it's kind of getting more difficult to find them but when you have uh writers like yours you know I quoted you multiple times uh in a book about the financial crisis because your stories were so cutting it's in my slides right now as I discussed the next Edition because we went back to the same story to explain how the bailouts work right uh which which you had a story explaining and I say in the title it said quietly this program helps quietly right and then you exposed for example in another story about the small print in um in the way that the banks manage you know money for Pension funds yes yes and that was the Securities lending investigation I think you're talking about that was an in investigation I did um because in general after the financial crisis one of the things that I and another reporter named greton Morganson that we looked at a lot was um how unequal the system was for ordinary people versus the big banks with the power and why was it that people on Wall Street many of them um still got huge bonuses before and after the financial crisis whereas Ordinary People through their homes and their Investments really lost out and so we were doing story after Story to examine the kind of tipped scale and one that we did was on Securities lending which is where a big Bank um they'll be holding Investments for Pension funds for example but they are allowed to while they're holding their money not just invest them but actually loan out the shares of stock that they have invested those Pension funds in and the stock is loaned out often to hedge funds that are short selling things but sometimes the stock doesn't come out I mean doesn't come back sometimes the stock does not come back and guess who's on the hook do you think it's the bank or the or the regular The Regular Guy the pension fund the pension fund they lose the money and so I did do this big piece I think you're thinking of JP Morgan yeah insecurities lending and really showed how this New Orleans uh retirement pension fund lost all this money and in the end of the story you might remember the the ending of the story the quote the person from the pension fund just said at the end you know essentially the leaders of this Bank JP Morgan were going to do whatever it took to make money yeah for their shareholders a shareholder I would be happy but as a customer on Whose back this money was made I'm less happy with that right yeah yeah and then uh what about all the ctoc and the anonymous Corporation talk about that a little bit sure so after all of this um 2008 financial crisis I should mention there also I wrote a lot about gold sacks in 2008 and also uncovered this big um collateralized debt obligation deal they did called Abacus that led to a big settlement that they paid um and I mentioned that because Goldman Sachs is going to come up again in this kleptocracy case okay so then a few years later um with law that's right a few years later um I got interested in um you know where where does corrupt ill gotten gain stolen money around the world where does it get hidden and at first I thought I'd be doing a piece about you know the Virgin Islands or an offshore place but I started calling around um basically investigators and asset forfeiture lawyers to say well where does the money go how do you follow this money Trail and they said you're in New York right I said yeah they said just look look out your window it's right there it's holding up your whole real estate market and I said but I thought it went through those offshore islands and they said it does go through there but people ultimately want stolen money where they can spend it and they don't live it there so it goes through there and it ends up in us real estate and so then you know I decided I should really try to find a microcosm and get into every high-end condo once we picked the Time Warner Center which is a iconic complex in Manhattan and got to the bottom of all 200 condo owners and it turned out a couple dozen had um been accused of major wrongdoing around the world and in fact stolen the money and there were multiple cases from Mexico and Russia but probably the most notable one is in that building um I uncovered what became a um $6 billion Scandal where money was stolen from the people of Malaysia laundered through those offshore places and put into US real estate so that's what uh turns out to be the case that the US and the UK are kind of the biggest destinations theyit money and they kind of you know wink wink and not no welcome it because you know but then of course the housing prices go up and you know London prices go up and London starts being called L London gr or whatever all the oligarchs and then you know that and art and and other yeah they also launder it through ART because chrises and sther bees you know historically weren't always checking the same kind of detail on who was buying it and really what our project revealed is that um banks for all the problems you have at Banks they did have more requirements to know their customers than real estate companies or than art companies and so it was an unequal playing field where you could more easily put stolen money into real estate or it's still possibly through some of the private Equity or venture capital or yes as well yes you could put it into an investment fund there has been some reform since this project I did uh ran in 2015 and there has been some reform the treasury has made some rules around real estate um but you still could do it today um there are more hurdles um and certainly there's more awareness now you know when we did this project it was before the Panama papers and all of those projects that brought awareness to the secrecy to secrecy and shell companies so since the project I think you know it inspired many other outlets to write on this and there is just more public awareness of this issue yeah I mean there is a corporate transparency act but we'll see what happens with that beneficial owners the US is a big lagard on on these issues so somehow it's very hard here to you know as people say you can drive you can't drive down the street without the authorities knowing who you are uh but you can buy something very secretly exactly you can form a shell Corporation with without your name being attached to it and you know we had here you know the founder of global witness which did this big uh uh sting operation with law law firms in New York and so how easy it is to Lo their money into the US which they didn't believe was the case and top law firms were agreeing to to to help their client uh it's really been a shift in the US in the past 30 years versus historical times because actually originally in the US it was kind of um in the Jeffersonian focus on land ownership um it land ownership was supposed to be public because people were supposed to know oh if you have an issue with a property who do you talk to about it and practically speaking now it's actually very difficult if you have an issue to know who to even go to and it could be an anonymous Corporation it could be an anonymous Corporation and um I looked at the transactions of real estate held by llc's going back over 30 years and it just wasn't so common in the 1990s and before that but it's really Skyrocket and it doesn't mean everyone doing it is not necessarily doing illegal things but a little bit back to what I said on that accounting class what is the environment for fraud so everyone buying in an LLC is not necessarily doing something bad right but they are all creating collectively an environment in which people who are trying to do something hide blend in with the crowd and become legitimate uh in the system yes yeah so that's that's one thread um so how do we uncover things you have to do investigations and then you know who often knows things are people inside who might who would they talk to often to journalists so so-called whistleblowers so what what has been your experience with whistleblowers well so in every investigation that I've done I've always had inside sources um you just cannot uncover the real details and and prove them to a level that you could publish them without some people inside talking to you and it's always very sensitive because people who have talked with me for these investigations you know are putting their their jobs at risk even potentially opening them themselves up to you know um legal action with their with their company and usually what I find though is when it's something that's been done that's so wrong people inside a place often really care about their institution and they're upset this thing has happened and so they want it to come to light and so um you know when I have sought people out or been sought out by whistleblowers it happens both ways you know you really have to carefully work through the terms of confidentiality also as a journalist I try to think a lot about you know um again if with if if with the editors if we've all decided we will grant anonymity what are the steps we're taking to so we don't inadvertently identify them so you have to think through exactly how you describe them in the story also how you talk about them when you talk to other people so do many of them have have they tried to change from within or you know what what would have led them to speak to a journalist sometimes people are raising concerns inside inside for sure um I would say that type of person who was raising the concerns inside and wasn't listened to would be the kind of person who who would seek a journalist out but because it doesn't work from inside right but many of the people who have been the best sources of information that I've found in investigations have not raised concern inside and they did not seek me out but when I approached them they thought about it they realized it was a problem and they wanted to be part of bringing it to light I see um and for me as a journalist I've worked with both people but I actually do find some comfort when it's someone I found myself yeah and that you know I know that they're not on an agenda for some other reason um so you know both kinds they just they just reflect and come out with the actual fact so they may have just like not wanted to look into it before or just didn't want to talk about it or or some times within a system so for example with the 2008 financial crisis people sometimes in a system don't always reflect on they're too busy the ethics of what they're doing and the you know if if everyone around them is doing it they're just participating so I've actually found sometimes when I've interviewed people the questions I've asked have caused them to even on the spot start reflecting and thinking differently I see so they just never thought of it yeah yeah and then they kind of you know um so that you know I will say internationally you know so I've um investigated corruption in many countries not only Malaysia but um articles that um I've written have been involving uh public officials from Mexico from Russia from really all over the world um and um in other places also especially when you're investigating um public officials you know government officials depending on the country you have to be really concerned about people's safety yeah and whether the people who speak with you are going to be arrested yeah and so for example when I was in Malaysia and this of 2014 investigating the prime minister so he ran the whole country when I met the people who were giving me information that allowed me to establish that this money was stolen um in numerous instances I met them um you know with my hair under a baseball cap or it's a Muslim country there I actually wore a head covering to some places because I really stood out there and you know um the first day I was there I met someone in a Starbucks just looking like myself and a photo of me with that person was um emailed around to the point that I was with another source later who said you need to be very careful for people's protection that people aren't seeing sitting with you because government security is emailing this photo of you around meeting people so then I realized the burden was on me not to stand out where when I was meeting with people so I really um started discussing you a little bit just to but we not to them they knew the sources knew who I was but just so observers yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah um so after the New York Times uh you had a little stint in the Wall Street Journal and it was not quite as a reporter so uh but it it sort of touches on a lot of things that are in the news right now all the way to AI so having to do with technology and with the business of uh of the media can can you talk a little bit about that sure um also at the New York Times I was very involved in um creating like the digital blueprint for the New York times's transformation which helped it get to Good Financial footing because of that the Wall Street Journal recruited me to help them with their digital transformation and at the journal um I had this rare job um because normally in the news business it's very siloed content here technology business um but I was the top editor at the Wall Street Journal running all the coverage strategies so you know which beats do we have and what are our big projects this year but also the chief product and Technology officer across the business and one of the things that was already bubbling in 2018 when I first started there I was there three years um was AI so we actually did some early AI deployments at the Wall Street Journal and I was able to bring them together by being you know leading both the engineering teams and the News teams and we were able to try some things out and it's given me you know a good perspective on AI and the News which I now advise some media companies and strategy so I often will help them think about their AI plans so what would an AI plan look like for in news media I mean well I mean news companies like all companies I think are facing choices now about what they do around Ai and one of the one of the biggest choices that news companies today are facing are um whether they are going to do a deal and partner with a company like open AI right or whether they're gonna The Wall Street Journal just the Wall Street Journal had a huge deal in the last day just came out overnight and um so in that scenario The Wall Street Journal had to evaluate do we give access to all of our content to open AI so that they can train their models um and take some money now which will help our short-term profits right um or do we not do that and what I advise news companies to do is you don't have to do a deal with opening I but if you say no we're not doing that we're not going to be involved in the training what I advise companies is don't then say and we're doing nothing on AI because that's just not going to work it's running through the whole economy New York Times is suing well the New York Times is suing but the New York Times also has made very large technology investments in house and they have not been public really fully from The New York Times all that they're doing on AI but they've even hired more AI Specialists and so what it appears because they are not doing the deal with open AI at this point is that they are taking the other attack which is we will invent our own AI related products and we will integrate AI into our own business rather than REI relying on a place like open AI so what I tell news companies like you got to do one or the other and if you're going to go the path of we're not going to do a deal we're going to build our own just be prepared to invest a lot of money yeah but there are some news companies actually not doing either just saying well you know we'll see what happens here and I think it's those companies are going to be quite behind in the product experiences they can offer to users and and it'll be it'll affect their future if they don't at least figure out what ways make sense for their business to use AI I want to go back to uh to sort of Truth yeah uh so I do have concerns that speaking of AI they they truth is more likely to come out I because I am in a space and I've written in a space in which there's a lot of false and misleading claims being made so if AI was to train on all the nonsense that has been written in banking it will perpetuate them that's a good point and I mean from a kind of public information ecosystem standpoint you could make the argument that even racism are the things right that you hope all the news companies would be involved in the training because you want their good reporting integrated but I think also these news companies have their own business decision on what they want to do um misinformation you know is a huge problem now huge but I will say um you know it's complicated it's not like all information that has been out there is not good information you know that's the thing is there's a lot of bad information there's a lot of propaganda information you know obviously in in in totalitarian regimes where people you know the top people want to control the truth but in our Free Speech uh democracy you have certain people wanting other people to know some things and not other things uh so knowledge can get corrupted in the case of businesses and companies which is so much at the heart of what you do well a very big change um with the introduction of the internet you know which now has been around a little while but when you think with a longer Horizon used to be if Goldman Sachs wanted to get its message out before the internet they had to go through the news companies because that was the means of distribution and with the internet they can have all their own messages out in fact a lot of companies like Goldman Sachs even have what they call their own Newsroom and so I I wonder it's very opaque what open Ai and some of these different anthropic are what they're putting in their models but are they putting essentially all press releases into it and as you know press releases are not always factual or truthful so that is a risk if they're putting press releases in with the same weight as verified information well just knows verification or fact verification is becoming an issue in our sort of posttruth I agree with you yes well Lise thank you so much for all your Insight thank you for all your work uh we're excited to hear about your books 15 cents to the dollar uh which took a lot of uh uncovering truth about uh wealth in equality and a relation with race uh and it's great to talk to you thanks a lot thanks for having [Music] me e