The philosophy that I live by every single da is if you do good, I'll talk about you.

If you do bad, I'll talk about you.

At the end of the day, I'll talk about you.

I was always in and around news.

My dad watched five hours of news a day, read the newspaper.

It used to drive us crazy as kids, because we never got to see the end of a TV show, because we'd always have to turn early, because he did not want to miss the opening.

I learned early on that media has an impact in all of our lives.

And so it was no shock that frankly, that's what I do for a living.

And it was pretty funny.

When I was about to graduate from college, I was a couple weeks away, and my dad, we were talking, and he was concerned about the starting salar in media.

And he said, "Well, son, do you really want to do this?"

And I said, "Look, all that news every single "doggone day for all these years.

Surely one of your kids was going to go into media."

The black press is actually in my DNA.

What has always been important to me is that we live today by what was said in the first editorial of the first black newspaper, "Freedom's Journal," in 1827.

"We wish to plead our own cause."

Just imagine if we did not have "Ebony" or "Jet".

Archbishop Desmond Tutu accepted the Trumpet Award.

And he said, "African Americans, you need to understand "that when we were children in South Africa, "and we did not have any hope for Apartheid ending, "we would look through the pages of 'Ebony' and see there was a future for us that we didn't know."

That's why we've got to have Washington Watch and TV1 and black owned media, because if we don't tell our story, I don't even want to image what our stor would look like.

My first national appearance began in July 2002 on "Talkback Live" on CNN.

And I probably over a four and a half year period did probably about 100-plus appearances on CNN, Fox, MSNBC, Court TV, BBC, before I was hired at CNN in February 2007.

The favorite thing I hear all the time, and I hear it all over the country-- young folks, middle age, older folks, is, "Man, you sa "exactly what I'm thinking.

"And I'm glad somebody's there to say exactl what I'm thinking."

And so to me that's my role.

My grandfather, he was a deeply religious man.

I don't consider myself to be a Catholic or a Baptist or a Methodist.

I consider myself to be a Christian.

In all that I've done, I've always made it clear that my faith is the essence of who I am.

And I'm not afraid to actually speak about issue of faith.

Actually say, "Jesus" on the air.

I get a kick out of Americans who say, "We don't want that conversation."

But the first year I was with CNN I hosted four religion specials.

We won every time slot three of those, came in second in one of those.

Because people were actually watching.

But we have to be willing to actually have the difficult conversations.

I just think that so many people say, "That's personal.

I don't want to go there," until they're forced to go there.