ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Christiane Amanpour - Journalist
TV news legend Christiane Amanpour is known for her uncompromising approach to reporting and interviewing.

Why you should listen

Christiane Amanpour is CNN's chief international correspondent and anchor of the global a airs program "Amanpour," broadcast from the television network's London bureau. She's covered the most relevant conflicts of the last decades, exposing both the brutality and human cost of war and its geopolitical impacts. From the 1991 Gulf War to the siege of Sarajevo (the city later named her honorary citizen), from the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq to the trial of Saddam Hussein the following year, Amanpour's fearless and uncompromising approach has made her popular with audiences, and a force to be reckoned with by global influencers.

During the Balkan wars, Amanpour famously broke with the idea of journalism neutrality by calling out human right abuses and saying that "there are some situations one simply cannot be neutral about, because when you are neutral you are an accomplice." Since her interview show "Amanpour" was launched in 2009, she's spoken to leaders and decision makers on the issues affecting the world today while continuing reporting from all over the world, including the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and the 2011 tsunami in Japan.

More profile about the speaker
Christiane Amanpour | Speaker | TED.com
Chris Anderson - TED Curator
After a long career in journalism and publishing, Chris Anderson became the curator of the TED Conference in 2002 and has developed it as a platform for identifying and disseminating ideas worth spreading.

Why you should listen

Chris Anderson is the Curator of TED, a nonprofit devoted to sharing valuable ideas, primarily through the medium of 'TED Talks' -- short talks that are offered free online to a global audience.

Chris was born in a remote village in Pakistan in 1957. He spent his early years in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, where his parents worked as medical missionaries, and he attended an American school in the Himalayas for his early education. After boarding school in Bath, England, he went on to Oxford University, graduating in 1978 with a degree in philosophy, politics and economics.

Chris then trained as a journalist, working in newspapers and radio, including two years producing a world news service in the Seychelles Islands.

Back in the UK in 1984, Chris was captivated by the personal computer revolution and became an editor at one of the UK's early computer magazines. A year later he founded Future Publishing with a $25,000 bank loan. The new company initially focused on specialist computer publications but eventually expanded into other areas such as cycling, music, video games, technology and design, doubling in size every year for seven years. In 1994, Chris moved to the United States where he built Imagine Media, publisher of Business 2.0 magazine and creator of the popular video game users website IGN. Chris eventually merged Imagine and Future, taking the combined entity public in London in 1999, under the Future name. At its peak, it published 150 magazines and websites and employed 2,000 people.

This success allowed Chris to create a private nonprofit organization, the Sapling Foundation, with the hope of finding new ways to tackle tough global issues through media, technology, entrepreneurship and, most of all, ideas. In 2001, the foundation acquired the TED Conference, then an annual meeting of luminaries in the fields of Technology, Entertainment and Design held in Monterey, California, and Chris left Future to work full time on TED.

He expanded the conference's remit to cover all topics, including science, business and key global issues, while adding a Fellows program, which now has some 300 alumni, and the TED Prize, which grants its recipients "one wish to change the world." The TED stage has become a place for thinkers and doers from all fields to share their ideas and their work, capturing imaginations, sparking conversation and encouraging discovery along the way.

In 2006, TED experimented with posting some of its talks on the Internet. Their viral success encouraged Chris to begin positioning the organization as a global media initiative devoted to 'ideas worth spreading,' part of a new era of information dissemination using the power of online video. In June 2015, the organization posted its 2,000th talk online. The talks are free to view, and they have been translated into more than 100 languages with the help of volunteers from around the world. Viewership has grown to approximately one billion views per year.

Continuing a strategy of 'radical openness,' in 2009 Chris introduced the TEDx initiative, allowing free licenses to local organizers who wished to organize their own TED-like events. More than 8,000 such events have been held, generating an archive of 60,000 TEDx talks. And three years later, the TED-Ed program was launched, offering free educational videos and tools to students and teachers.

More profile about the speaker
Chris Anderson | Speaker | TED.com
TEDGlobal>NYC

Christiane Amanpour: How to seek truth in the era of fake news

Filmed:
1,615,954 views

Known worldwide for her courage and clarity, Christiane Amanpour has spent the past three decades interviewing business, cultural and political leaders who have shaped history. In conversation with TED Curator Chris Anderson, Amanpour discusses fake news, objectivity in journalism, the leadership vacuum in global politics and more, sharing her wisdom along the way. "Be careful where you get information from," she says. "Unless we are all engaged as global citizens who appreciate the truth, who understand science, empirical evidence and facts, then we are going to be wandering around -- to a potential catastrophe."
- Journalist
TV news legend Christiane Amanpour is known for her uncompromising approach to reporting and interviewing. Full bio - TED Curator
After a long career in journalism and publishing, Chris Anderson became the curator of the TED Conference in 2002 and has developed it as a platform for identifying and disseminating ideas worth spreading. Full bio

Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.

00:12
Chis Anderson: Christiane,
great to have you here.
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So you've had this amazing viewpoint,
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and perhaps it's fair to say
that in the last few years,
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there have been some alarming
developments that you're seeing.
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What's alarmed you most?
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Christiane Amanpour: Well, just listening
to the earlier speakers,
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I can frame it
in what they've been saying:
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climate change, for instance --
cities, the threat to our environment
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and our lives.
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It basically also boils down to
understanding the truth
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and to be able to get to the truth
of what we're talking about
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in order to really be able to solve it.
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So if 99.9 percent
of the science on climate
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is empirical, scientific evidence,
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but it's competing almost equally
with a handful of deniers,
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that is not the truth;
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that is the epitome of fake news.
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And so for me, the last few years --
certainly this last year --
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has crystallized the notion of fake news
in a way that's truly alarming
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and not just some slogan
to be thrown around.
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Because when you can't distinguish
between the truth and fake news,
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you have a very much more
difficult time trying to solve
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some of the great issues that we face.
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CA: Well, you've been involved
in this question of,
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what is balance, what is truth,
what is impartiality,
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for a long time.
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You were on the front lines
reporting the Balkan Wars 25 years ago.
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And back then, you famously said,
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by calling out human right abuses,
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you said, "Look, there are some situations
one simply cannot be neutral about,
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because when you're neutral,
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you are an accomplice."
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So, do you feel that today's journalists
aren't heeding that advice
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about balance?
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CA: Well, look, I think for journalists,
objectivity is the golden rule.
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But I think sometimes we don't understand
what objectivity means.
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And I actually learned this very,
very young in my career,
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which was during the Balkan Wars.
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I was young then.
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It was about 25 years ago.
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And what we faced was the wholesale
violation, not just of human rights,
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but all the way to ethnic
cleansing and genocide,
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and that has been adjudicated
in the highest war crimes court
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in the world.
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So, we know what we were seeing.
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Trying to tell the world
what we were seeing
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brought us accusations of bias,
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of siding with one side,
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of not seeing the whole side,
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and just, you know,
trying to tell one story.
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I particularly and personally
was accused of siding with,
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for instance, the citizens of Sarajevo --
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"siding with the Muslims,"
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because they were the minority
who were being attacked
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by Christians on the Serb side
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in this area.
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And it worried me.
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It worried me that I was being
accused of this.
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I thought maybe I was wrong,
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maybe I'd forgotten what objectivity was.
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But then I started to understand
that what people wanted
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was actually not to do anything --
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not to step in,
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not to change the situation,
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not to find a solution.
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And so, their fake news at that time,
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their lie at that time --
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including our government's,
our democratically elected government's,
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with values and principles
of human rights --
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their lie was to say
that all sides are equally guilty,
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that this has been centuries
of ethnic hatred,
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whereas we knew that wasn't true,
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that one side had decided to kill,
slaughter and ethnically cleanse
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another side.
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So that is where, for me,
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I understood that objectivity means
giving all sides an equal hearing
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and talking to all sides,
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but not treating all sides equally,
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not creating a forced moral equivalence
or a factual equivalence.
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And when you come up against
that crisis point
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in situations of grave violations
of international and humanitarian law,
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if you don't understand
what you're seeing,
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if you don't understand the truth
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and if you get trapped
in the fake news paradigm,
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then you are an accomplice.
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And I refuse to be
an accomplice to genocide.
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(Applause)
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CH: So there have always been
these propaganda battles,
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and you were courageous in taking
the stand you took back then.
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Today, there's a whole new way, though,
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in which news seems to be becoming fake.
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How would you characterize that?
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CA: Well, look -- I am really alarmed.
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And everywhere I look,
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you know, we're buffeted by it.
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Obviously, when the leader
of the free world,
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when the most powerful person
in the entire world,
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which is the president
of the United States --
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this is the most important, most powerful
country in the whole world,
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economically, militarily, politically
in every which way --
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and it seeks to, obviously, promote
its values and power around the world.
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So we journalists,
who only seek the truth --
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I mean, that is our mission --
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we go around the world
looking for the truth
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in order to be everybody's eyes and ears,
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people who can't go out
in various parts of the world
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to figure out what's going on
about things that are vitally important
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to everybody's health and security.
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So when you have a major world leader
accusing you of fake news,
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it has an exponential ripple effect.
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And what it does is,
it starts to chip away
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at not just our credibility,
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but at people's minds --
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people who look at us,
and maybe they're thinking,
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"Well, if the president
of the United States says that,
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maybe somewhere there's a truth in there."
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CH: Presidents have always
been critical of the media --
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CA: Not in this way.
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CH: So, to what extent --
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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CH: I mean, someone a couple years ago
looking at the avalanche of information
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pouring through Twitter
and Facebook and so forth,
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might have said,
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"Look, our democracies are healthier
than they've ever been.
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There's more news than ever.
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Of course presidents
will say what they'll say,
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but everyone else can say
what they will say.
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What's not to like?
How is there an extra danger?"
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CA: So, I wish that was true.
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I wish that the proliferation of platforms
upon which we get our information
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meant that there was a proliferation
of truth and transparency
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and depth and accuracy.
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But I think the opposite has happened.
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You know, I'm a little bit of a Luddite,
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I will confess.
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Even when we started to talk about
the information superhighway,
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which was a long time ago,
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before social media, Twitter
and all the rest of it,
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I was actually really afraid
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that that would put people
into certain lanes and tunnels
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and have them just focusing
on areas of their own interest
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instead of seeing the broad picture.
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And I'm afraid to say
that with algorithms, with logarithms,
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with whatever the "-ithms" are
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that direct us into all these particular
channels of information,
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that seems to be happening right now.
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I mean, people have written
about this phenomenon.
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People have said that yes,
the internet came,
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its promise was to exponentially explode
our access to more democracy,
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more information,
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less bias,
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more varied information.
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And, in fact, the opposite has happened.
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And so that, for me,
is incredibly dangerous.
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And again, when you are the president
of this country and you say things,
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it also gives leaders in other
undemocratic countries the cover
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to affront us even worse,
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and to really whack us --
and their own journalists --
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with this bludgeon of fake news.
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CH: To what extent
is what happened, though,
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in part, just an unintended consequence,
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that the traditional
media that you worked in
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had this curation-mediation role,
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where certain norms were observed,
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certain stories would be rejected
because they weren't credible,
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but now that the standard
for publication and for amplification
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is just interest, attention,
excitement, click,
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"Did it get clicked on?"
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"Send it out there!"
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and that's what's --
is that part of what's caused the problem?
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CA: I think it's a big problem,
and we saw this in the election of 2016,
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where the idea of "clickbait"
was very sexy and very attractive,
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and so all these fake news sites
and fake news items
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were not just haphazardly
and by happenstance being put out there,
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there's been a whole industry
in the creation of fake news
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in parts of Eastern Europe, wherever,
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and you know, it's planted
in real space and in cyberspace.
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So I think that, also,
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the ability of our technology
to proliferate this stuff
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at the speed of sound
or light, just about --
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we've never faced that before.
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And we've never faced
such a massive amount of information
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which is not curated
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by those whose profession
leads them to abide by the truth,
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to fact-check
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and to maintain a code of conduct
and a code of professional ethics.
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CH: Many people here may know
people who work at Facebook
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or Twitter and Google and so on.
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They all seem like great people
with good intention --
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let's assume that.
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If you could speak with the leaders
of those companies,
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what would you say to them?
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CA: Well, you know what --
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I'm sure they are
incredibly well-intentioned,
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and they certainly developed
an unbelievable, game-changing system,
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where everybody's connected
on this thing called Facebook.
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And they've created a massive
economy for themselves
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and an amazing amount of income.
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I would just say,
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"Guys, you know, it's time
to wake up and smell the coffee
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and look at what's happening
to us right now."
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Mark Zuckerberg wants to create
a global community.
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I want to know: What is that global
community going to look like?
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I want to know where the codes
of conduct actually are.
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Mark Zuckerberg said --
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and I don't blame him,
he probably believed this --
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that it was crazy to think
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that the Russians or anybody else
could be tinkering and messing around
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with this avenue.
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And what have we just learned
in the last few weeks?
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That, actually, there has been
a major problem in that regard,
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and now they're having to investigate it
and figure it out.
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Yes, they're trying to do
what they can now
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to prevent the rise of fake news,
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but, you know,
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it went pretty unrestricted
for a long, long time.
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So I guess I would say, you know,
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you guys are brilliant at technology;
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let's figure out another algorithm.
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Can we not?
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CH: An algorithm that includes
journalistic investigation --
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CA: I don't really know how they do it,
but somehow, you know --
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filter out the crap!
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(Laughter)
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And not just the unintentional --
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(Applause)
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but the deliberate lies that are planted
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by people who've been doing this
as a matter of warfare
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for decades.
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The Soviets, the Russians --
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they are the masters of war
by other means, of hybrid warfare.
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And this is a --
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this is what they've decided to do.
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It worked in the United States,
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it didn't work in France,
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it hasn't worked in Germany.
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During the elections there,
where they've tried to interfere,
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the president of France
right now, Emmanuel Macron,
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took a very tough stand
and confronted it head on,
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as did Angela Merkel.
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CH: There's some hope to be had
from some of this, isn't there?
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That the world learns.
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We get fooled once,
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maybe we get fooled again,
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but maybe not the third time.
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Is that true?
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CA: I mean, let's hope.
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But I think in this regard that so much
of it is also about technology,
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that the technology has to also be given
some kind of moral compass.
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I know I'm talking nonsense,
but you know what I mean.
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CH: We need a filter-the-crap algorithm
with a moral compass --
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CA: There you go.
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CH: I think that's good.
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CA: No -- "moral technology."
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We all have moral compasses --
moral technology.
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CH: I think that's a great challenge.
CA: You know what I mean.
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CH: Talk just a minute about leadership.
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12:36
You've had a chance to speak
with so many people across the world.
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I think for some of us --
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I speak for myself,
I don't know if others feel this --
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there's kind of been a disappointment of:
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12:45
Where are the leaders?
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So many of us have been disappointed --
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Aung San Suu Kyi,
what's happened recently,
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12:51
it's like, "No! Another one
bites the dust."
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You know, it's heartbreaking.
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12:55
(Laughter)
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Who have you met
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12:58
who you have been
impressed by, inspired by?
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CA: Well, you talk about
the world in crisis,
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which is absolutely true,
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and those of us who spend our whole lives
immersed in this crisis --
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I mean, we're all on the verge
of a nervous breakdown.
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So it's pretty stressful right now.
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13:15
And you're right --
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there is this perceived and actual
vacuum of leadership,
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13:19
and it's not me saying it,
I ask all these --
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13:22
whoever I'm talking to,
I ask about leadership.
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I was speaking to the outgoing
president of Liberia today,
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13:29
[Ellen Johnson Sirleaf,]
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who --
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(Applause)
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in three weeks' time,
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will be one of the very rare
heads of an African country
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who actually abides by the constitution
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and gives up power
after her prescribed term.
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She has said she wants
to do that as a lesson.
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But when I asked her about leadership,
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13:52
and I gave a quick-fire round
of certain names,
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I presented her with the name
of the new French president,
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Emmanuel Macron.
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13:59
And she said --
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14:00
I said, "So what do you think
when I say his name?"
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And she said,
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"Shaping up potentially to be
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a leader to fill our current
leadership vacuum."
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I thought that was really interesting.
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Yesterday, I happened to have
an interview with him.
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I'm very proud to say,
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I got his first international interview.
It was great. It was yesterday.
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14:20
And I was really impressed.
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I don't know whether I should be
saying that in an open forum,
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14:25
but I was really impressed.
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(Laughter)
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And it could be just because
it was his first interview,
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14:31
but -- I asked questions,
and you know what?
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14:33
He answered them!
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(Laughter)
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14:36
(Applause)
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14:40
There was no spin,
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there was no wiggle and waggle,
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14:44
there was no spend-five-minutes-
to-come-back-to-the-point.
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I didn't have to keep interrupting,
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14:48
which I've become rather
renowned for doing,
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because I want people
to answer the question.
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14:53
And he answered me,
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14:55
and it was pretty interesting.
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And he said --
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CH: Tell me what he said.
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CA: No, no, you go ahead.
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15:02
CH: You're the interrupter,
I'm the listener.
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CA: No, no, go ahead.
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CH: What'd he say?
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CA: OK. You've talked about
nationalism and tribalism here today.
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15:10
I asked him, "How did you have the guts
to confront the prevailing winds
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15:14
of anti-globalization,
nationalism, populism
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15:18
when you can see what happened in Brexit,
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15:20
when you could see what happened
in the United States
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15:23
and what might have happened
in many European elections
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15:25
at the beginning of 2017?"
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15:27
And he said,
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15:29
"For me, nationalism means war.
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15:33
We have seen it before,
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15:35
we have lived through it before
on my continent,
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15:37
and I am very clear about that."
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15:40
So he was not going to,
just for political expediency,
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3961
15:44
embrace the, kind of, lowest
common denominator
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15:47
that had been embraced
in other political elections.
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4005
15:51
And he stood against Marine Le Pen,
who is a very dangerous woman.
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15:56
CH: Last question for you, Christiane.
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Tell us about ideas worth spreading.
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16:02
If you could plant one idea
into the minds of everyone here,
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16:06
what would that be?
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16:08
CA: I would say really be careful
where you get your information from;
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5114
16:13
really take responsibility
for what you read, listen to and watch;
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5322
16:18
make sure that you go to the trusted
brands to get your main information,
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4887
16:23
no matter whether you have
a wide, eclectic intake,
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4689
16:28
really stick with the brand
names that you know,
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16:31
because in this world right now,
at this moment right now,
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16:34
our crises, our challenges,
our problems are so severe,
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16:39
that unless we are all engaged
as global citizens
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3551
16:42
who appreciate the truth,
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16:44
who understand science,
empirical evidence and facts,
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4345
16:48
then we are just simply
going to be wandering along
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16:52
to a potential catastrophe.
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1961
16:54
So I would say, the truth,
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1364
16:55
and then I would come back
to Emmanuel Macron
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16:58
and talk about love.
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17:00
I would say that there's not
enough love going around.
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4469
17:04
And I asked him to tell me about love.
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2692
17:07
I said, "You know, your marriage
is the subject of global obsession."
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3592
17:10
(Laughter)
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17:12
"Can you tell me about love?
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17:13
What does it mean to you?"
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17:15
I've never asked a president
or an elected leader about love.
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2941
17:18
I thought I'd try it.
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1158
17:19
And he said -- you know,
he actually answered it.
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3915
17:23
And he said, "I love my wife,
she is part of me,
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4161
17:27
we've been together for decades."
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1627
17:29
But here's where it really counted,
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17:30
what really stuck with me.
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1503
17:32
He said,
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17:33
"It is so important for me
to have somebody at home
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17:37
who tells me the truth."
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17:40
So you see, I brought it home.
It's all about the truth.
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17:43
(Laughter)
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1006
17:44
CH: So there you go. Truth and love.
Ideas worth spreading.
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2807
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Christiane Amanpour, thank you
so much. That was great.
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2663
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(Applause)
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17:50
CA: Thank you.
CH: That was really lovely.
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17:53
(Applause)
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17:54
CA: Thank you.
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1165

▲Back to top

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Christiane Amanpour - Journalist
TV news legend Christiane Amanpour is known for her uncompromising approach to reporting and interviewing.

Why you should listen

Christiane Amanpour is CNN's chief international correspondent and anchor of the global a airs program "Amanpour," broadcast from the television network's London bureau. She's covered the most relevant conflicts of the last decades, exposing both the brutality and human cost of war and its geopolitical impacts. From the 1991 Gulf War to the siege of Sarajevo (the city later named her honorary citizen), from the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq to the trial of Saddam Hussein the following year, Amanpour's fearless and uncompromising approach has made her popular with audiences, and a force to be reckoned with by global influencers.

During the Balkan wars, Amanpour famously broke with the idea of journalism neutrality by calling out human right abuses and saying that "there are some situations one simply cannot be neutral about, because when you are neutral you are an accomplice." Since her interview show "Amanpour" was launched in 2009, she's spoken to leaders and decision makers on the issues affecting the world today while continuing reporting from all over the world, including the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and the 2011 tsunami in Japan.

More profile about the speaker
Christiane Amanpour | Speaker | TED.com
Chris Anderson - TED Curator
After a long career in journalism and publishing, Chris Anderson became the curator of the TED Conference in 2002 and has developed it as a platform for identifying and disseminating ideas worth spreading.

Why you should listen

Chris Anderson is the Curator of TED, a nonprofit devoted to sharing valuable ideas, primarily through the medium of 'TED Talks' -- short talks that are offered free online to a global audience.

Chris was born in a remote village in Pakistan in 1957. He spent his early years in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, where his parents worked as medical missionaries, and he attended an American school in the Himalayas for his early education. After boarding school in Bath, England, he went on to Oxford University, graduating in 1978 with a degree in philosophy, politics and economics.

Chris then trained as a journalist, working in newspapers and radio, including two years producing a world news service in the Seychelles Islands.

Back in the UK in 1984, Chris was captivated by the personal computer revolution and became an editor at one of the UK's early computer magazines. A year later he founded Future Publishing with a $25,000 bank loan. The new company initially focused on specialist computer publications but eventually expanded into other areas such as cycling, music, video games, technology and design, doubling in size every year for seven years. In 1994, Chris moved to the United States where he built Imagine Media, publisher of Business 2.0 magazine and creator of the popular video game users website IGN. Chris eventually merged Imagine and Future, taking the combined entity public in London in 1999, under the Future name. At its peak, it published 150 magazines and websites and employed 2,000 people.

This success allowed Chris to create a private nonprofit organization, the Sapling Foundation, with the hope of finding new ways to tackle tough global issues through media, technology, entrepreneurship and, most of all, ideas. In 2001, the foundation acquired the TED Conference, then an annual meeting of luminaries in the fields of Technology, Entertainment and Design held in Monterey, California, and Chris left Future to work full time on TED.

He expanded the conference's remit to cover all topics, including science, business and key global issues, while adding a Fellows program, which now has some 300 alumni, and the TED Prize, which grants its recipients "one wish to change the world." The TED stage has become a place for thinkers and doers from all fields to share their ideas and their work, capturing imaginations, sparking conversation and encouraging discovery along the way.

In 2006, TED experimented with posting some of its talks on the Internet. Their viral success encouraged Chris to begin positioning the organization as a global media initiative devoted to 'ideas worth spreading,' part of a new era of information dissemination using the power of online video. In June 2015, the organization posted its 2,000th talk online. The talks are free to view, and they have been translated into more than 100 languages with the help of volunteers from around the world. Viewership has grown to approximately one billion views per year.

Continuing a strategy of 'radical openness,' in 2009 Chris introduced the TEDx initiative, allowing free licenses to local organizers who wished to organize their own TED-like events. More than 8,000 such events have been held, generating an archive of 60,000 TEDx talks. And three years later, the TED-Ed program was launched, offering free educational videos and tools to students and teachers.

More profile about the speaker
Chris Anderson | Speaker | TED.com