Up First from NPR - Alex Jones, The Washington Post, A New CO2 Record

Episode Date: June 7, 2024

Alex Jones, the right-wing media personality who trades in conspiracy theories, requests Chapter 7 liquidation to pay Sandy Hook families who sued him for defamation. NPR media reporter David Folkenflik shares his own experiences with Washington Post publisher Will Lewis, who reportedly pushed to squash a story involving him. Atmospheric CO2 hits a new record.Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.Today's episode of Up First was edited by Catherine Laidlaw, Emily Kopp, Neela Banerjee, Ally Schweitzer and Alice Woelfle. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Ben Abrams, Chris Thomas, and Milton Guevara. Our technical director is Zac Coleman, with engineering support from Stacey Abbott.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Alex Jones, the talk show host who peddles conspiracy theories, says he's going to liquidate his assets. Which brings him closer to Pang's Sandy Hook families who sued him for defamation. What would a fire sale on his media empire raise? I'm Michelle Martin, that's Steve Inskeep, and this is Up First from MTR News. New Washington Post CEO Will Lewis is accused of pressuring the paper's top editor to squash a story involving him when he worked at a different media organization. That editor recently quit. We hear from NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik, who says Lewis applied the same pressure to him. Also, it is really, really hot in the southwest. A heat dome put the region in a headlock, sending temperatures 20 to 30 degrees higher than normal.

And scientists link that to record levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day. Now, our change will honor 100 years of the Royal Canadian Air Force and their dedicated service to communities at home and abroad. From the skies to Our Change, this $2 commemorative circulation coin marks their storied past and promising future. Find the limited edition Royal Canadian Air Force $2 coin today. Alex Jones is one step closer to paying the families who sued him for defamation. Jones is a talk show host who built his career on spreading conspiracy theories, and he spread one about the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut in 2012

that killed more than two dozen people, mostly children. He claimed the shooting was fake, and he incited people to harass the families of the victims. A court ordered him to pay $1.5 billion in damages, but he first sought bankruptcy protection and now is moving to resolve the case through Chapter 7 liquidation. NPR's Tovia Smith has been following the story. Tovia, good morning. Good morning. What does Chapter 7 liquidation mean? Well, it would basically mean that there'd be a fire sale,

a controlled but a swift sale of everything from Jones's ownership in his company called Free Speech Systems to his personal gun collection. And it means the ball could get rolling pretty quickly on at least some payment for those Sandy Hook families who won that defamation suit. But the payment wouldn't be anywhere close to what these families are owed. Jones's assets are estimated now at about $10 million, which might mean just around a couple hundred thousand dollars for each of the plaintiffs, at least initially. And I say initially because a Chapter 7 trustee would have authority to hunt down any assets that Jones may have hidden,

and this hunting license, as some call it, would be a forever thing because Jones's case, unlike most bankruptcy cases where debts are washed away and you could get a fresh start, the judge ruled in Jones's case that can't happen because his wrongdoing was intentional and malicious. So bottom line, the families will have a claim on Jones's future earnings for the rest of his life. Wow. So he gives up $10 million, a tiny fraction of what he owes, and then this would pursue him forever. Why would Jones view that as a good option? Well, his attorneys say in court papers that there's no hope of settlement

or reorganization, and Chapter 7 liquidation would be simpler and cheaper and in everyone's interest. It is curious, though, given that Jones has been pretty obstructive and intransigent since these defamation lawsuits were filed. And I'll say he was especially erratic on his InfoWars show just last weekend, alternating between really angry defiance, screaming, swearing, and vowing to fight. And on the other hand, total despair, literally sobbing about losing his show and his company, which he called his baby. You know, you note that he's still on the air, he's still doing his show. Would this actually shut down his media empire if they go through with the Chapter 7? Well, yes, but with a caveat, and this is important as a lot of the families

who sued made it very clear that stopping Jones' conspiracy mongering is more important than any financial windfall. So yes, liquidation would spell the end of his control of his company, but it would not stop him from reincarnating into a new company that does the same kind of thing. And ironically, I'll add that would mean that the more Jones spews his bogus conspiracy theories and the more money he makes, the more money the families could get paid. So something of an odd situation. Okay, although I suppose he continues to have freedom of speech and freedom to defame people and then freedom to be responsible for the defamation. To get sued again.

Yeah, exactly. So what is the judge expected to rule on this request? The bankruptcy judge will decide next Friday whether Chapter 7 is the way to go here. And meantime, Jones is appealing the defamation cases and the ruling that families can keep chasing him for the rest of his life. And Piers Tovia Smith, thanks so much. Thank you. Okay, the Washington Post has one of the more famous mottos in all of journalism, democracy dies in darkness. Yes, but long before the paper adopted that slogan, it had become one of the nation's

great newspapers, famous for its Watergate investigation and others, which is why many people in the media and, frankly, outside the media are following this news. The paper's new CEO tried to tamp down coverage of an unflattering story involving him. One of his efforts came in a conversation with NPR media correspondent David Fulkenflik, who's been covering this story. David, good morning. Good morning, Steve. Okay, so the CEO here is named Will Lewis. He's trying to restructure the post at a difficult time for a lot of media. Circulation is down, and he's a deeply experienced guy, worked in British newspapers for many years. So what was the story about himself that he didn't want covered?

Well, Lewis faces accusations back in civil suits in London brought by Prince Harry, among others, that he was involved years ago in a cover-up. And that's a cover-up of a scandal involving illegal hacking into people's voicemails and emails by Rupert Murdoch's tabloids in their headlong pursuit of stories. Okay. So he was accused of a role there. This resurfaced in lawsuits. And then what happened this year when the Washington Post staff decided to report on its own CEO? So Lewis has previously denied wrongdoing. He's done so again. It's important to note he's not a defendant in these civil suits and he hasn't been prosecuted for any of this. At the same moment, he's at the core of a lot of these accusations.

And he told Sally Busby, then the executive editor of The Washington Post, these stories simply weren't newsworthy and she shouldn't cover it. She ultimately did. The Post did a bit of a coverage in March and then much fuller coverage in May. He accused Busby of a lapse in judgment in deciding to let her team go forward, although he didn't prevent it. Within about three and a half weeks, that is at the beginning of this week on Sunday, Busby was forced out. My reporting shows that was part of a larger restructuring that would have diminished her authority over the newsroom, really split it in two. But a lot of staff is concerned that perhaps their coverage of him was part of the reason as well. Oh, okay. Wow. Well, when you heard all of this from sources inside the Post, what did you recall from your own past reporting on this same topic,

this story about Will Lewis that he didn't want published. Well, right. We addressed this back in December. We really broke a lot of the details of this as new evidence surfaced in court in London detailing the allegations and the heft for it that he was involved in a cover-up. He and I spoke, as he has now acknowledged, off the record, but that off-the-record conversation had to do with the meat of the allegations against him, not about whether or not I should drop the story. And in fact, he did push me on a number of occasions to drop the story, offering me instead an exclusive about his plans for the post's future. Our agreement was really about the hacking scandal and not that. So you're saying that in a conversation that wasn't off the record, he made a quid pro quo offer to you, drop your story that I don't like, and I will give you a

story, an exclusive interview that I do like. Is that it? To misquote the godfather, he gave me an offer I had to refuse. Okay. You did refuse this. You went ahead with the story then, and now you've published his effort at a quid pro quo, and Lewis has offered some on-the-record comments about all this. What does he have to say? Right. He called me an employee rather than a journalist. Then he explicitly said I was an activist rather than a journalist working for NPR. He also said I dusted down comments that he had made six months ago and had made up some excuse to make a story of a non-story. I notice he's not denying any of the facts of your story.

Well, he certainly doesn't deny pressuring me and to try to induce me to drop my story in exchange for an exclusive. He does deny having pressured his own former executive editor. But I've got to say, not only have we reported that he did that, the New York Times did, and his own reporters at The Post have done that. And what he's done in doing so is kind of launched a broadside attack on values held dear at The Post and elsewhere of the idea of a firewall insulating the newsroom from pressure from those that it covers, including those who run its business side. The idea that we have to report American journalism without fear or favor. That's what I'm hearing from his colleagues at The Post today. David, thanks so much. You bet. Let's end here with David Folkenflik. Millions of Americans are trapped, for now, in a heat dome. And that has prompted excessive heat warnings and heat advisories that extend from California and Arizona into Nevada and then eastward into Texas. That's a meteorologist with CBS in the Bay Area. The heat dome is a big pocket of high pressure that locks in heat.

It's pushed temperatures in the southwest 20 to 30 degrees higher than normal for this time of year. And now we have news on a cause of that heat. New data shows that the planet-warming pollution that drives extreme weather has hit a new record. Rebecca Herscher from NPR's Climate Desk is covering this. Rebecca, good morning. Good morning. Okay, what is the connection between climate change generally and this specific heat event? They're intimately connected, Steve.

You know, humans burn oil and gas and coal. It releases carbon dioxide and other planet-warming gases. Those gases, they accumulate in the atmosphere over the course of decades. And all that excess gas traps heat, and that directly leads to higher temperatures worldwide. It helps drive these extreme heat events, where the temperature gets really high and stays really high, like what we're seeing. And in fact, scientists can say that the most intense heat waves that are happening right now would be literally impossible without human-caused climate change. So it's a really close connection.

Okay, but our news here is that carbon dioxide levels are hitting a record. Many people who follow this are aware that the United States has been cutting its greenhouse gas emissions. Yeah, yeah, that did happen, but the decrease was quite small. This was last year. And two years before that, the U.S. emissions actually increased each year. So the bigger picture here is that, you know, one, the U.S. decrease in emissions is not that big. And two, a lot of other countries are not cutting their emissions. So altogether, it's definitely not enough on its own to reverse this trend of CO2 accumulation. Yeah, there is the question of the rest of the

world, which is the majority of the world's people and the majority of the economic activity. So how is the carbon dioxide level measured? Well, scientists continuously measure CO2 in the atmosphere. And every single year, the peak CO2 amount sets a new record because humans keep adding more CO2 faster than it can break down. This has been happening since scientists started measurements in 1958. And because scientists are able to use other methods as well to estimate how much CO2 was in the atmosphere going back millennia, we can actually say with confidence that there's more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now than there has been in millions of years. In millions of years. Okay, so how high is this number?

Well, the exact number is 426.9 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere. That may not sound like a lot, parts per million. But the Earth is really, really sensitive to changes in the atmosphere. A little bit of extra CO2 traps a lot of heat. What really sticks out is that this number is significantly higher than last year. It was a really, really big jump. So the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is actually accelerating. Rebecca, thanks for the update. Really appreciate it. Thanks so much.

That's NPR's Rebecca Herscher. Finally, we have big news today from the World Cup, the Cricket World Cup. The U.S. men's cricket team last night pulled off an unbelievable upset. The red, white, and blue of USA has overcome the 2022 finalists. The American team beat Pakistan, one of the best cricket teams on the planet. The star of this match was an American, Sareb Natravalkar, who steered Team USA to victory in a super over, which is cricket's version of overtime. And he doesn't even play the sport full time. When he isn't making cricket history,

he works as a software engineer for Oracle. We hope his employer has a generous vacation policy because Team USA is set to take on India Wednesday. And that's Up First for this Friday, June 7th. I'm Steve Inskeep. And I'm Michelle Martin. How about giving a listen to Consider This from NPR? At Up First, we give you the three big stories of the day.

Consider This takes a deep dive into one story and what it means to you. And keep it going with Up First on the weekend. Ayesha Roscoe and Scott Simon have the news. Check them out wherever you get your podcasts. Today's Up First was edited by Catherine Laidlaw, Emily Kopp, Nila Banerjee, Alice Schweitzer, and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Ziad Butch, Ben Abrams, Chris Thomas, and Milton Guevara.

Our technical director is Zach Coleman, with engineering support from Stacey Abbott, and our executive producer is Erica Aguilar. Join us again Monday.