--:-- Gideon Resnick: Good morning. It's Friday, April 14th. I'm Gideon Resnick, and for Shamita Basu, this is Apple News Today.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: On today's show, federal authorities have arrested a suspect they believe is responsible for leaking classified U.S. intelligence, how millionaires might soon gentrify the moon, plus why some of the biggest stars in the NBA spent a lot of time on the bench this season. But first, jury selection is officially underway in a landmark trial against Fox News.
--:-- Dominion Voting Systems is suing Fox News for defamation, saying that Fox spread false claims that the voting technology company rigged the 2020 election by flipping millions of votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. Fox says it's protected by the First Amendment.
--:-- Brian Stelter: It's famously difficult to win a defamation lawsuit against a media company in the United States. That's thanks in part to the 1964 Supreme Court ruling in New York Times v. Sullivan. This 1964 case provided broad protections for the American press, protections that journalists in many other countries envy to this day.
--:-- Brian Stelter: Essentially, this ruling in 1964 made it hard for public figures to sue the media, for celebrities, politicians, you know, millionaires and billionaires. If you're a public figure, there's a very high bar that you have to be able to clear in order to sue a news outlet and win.
--:-- Brian Stelter: This high bar comes down to something called actual malice, which means that a news outlet reported something that they knew was false, or they did it with reckless disregard for the truth. This Supreme Court ruling set up a standard that almost nobody has been able to meet.
--:-- Brian Stelter: I mean, yes, there are defamation cases. There are suits from time to time. But they're often thrown out because how in the world can you prove that a journalist knew something was false and published it anyway? So that high bar provides broad protection for the press.
--:-- Brian Stelter: But it also has the consequence of making it a lot easier for news outlets to be sloppy. Now, many legal experts say Dominion has a particularly strong case. That's because in the discovery phase of this trial, we've gotten a rare window into the inner workings of Fox News through private messages between Fox producers, hosts, and executives.
--:-- Brian Stelter: This includes actual text messages from Fox News stars like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham insulting Donald Trump saying they didn't believe the election fraud conspiracies and undermining the credibility of Trump lawyer Sidney Powell who is often featured on Fox News repeating lies about election interference.
--:-- Brian Stelter: This all ran counter to what the hosts were broadcasting on air. Reading through hundreds of pages of documents, these texts and emails, it brought Fox News to life like I've never seen before.
--:-- Brian Stelter: As I was going through these pages, I was thinking, "And Fox is never going to be the same." And frankly, the media world is never going to be the same.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The trial is set to begin early next week, and Dominion is seeking $1.6 billion in damages. And the outcome of this case will likely have implications not only for Fox News, but for the media more broadly.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: To learn more about this case and the inner workings of Fox News, check out our latest episode of Apple News in Conversation.
--:-- [Music transitions to a new segment]
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Federal authorities believe 21-year-old Jack Teixeira is responsible for the leak of highly classified U.S. intelligence documents that we told you about earlier in the week.
--:-- [Audio clip of U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland plays]
--:-- U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland: Today, the Justice Department arrested Jack Douglas DeShera in connection with an investigation into alleged unauthorized removal, retention, and transmission of classified national defense information.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: As the Guardian points out, Garland's word choice there seems to indicate that Teixeira will be charged under the Espionage Act. If prosecutors pursue each leaked document as a separate count in an indictment, and if Teixeira is found guilty, he could be facing a long prison sentence.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Hundreds of secret and top secret materials were leaked, revealing sensitive information that was meant for senior military and intelligence leaders. Each charge under the Espionage Act comes with a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Federal authorities believe Teixeira was the leader of an online chat group on Discord, where a few dozen people, mostly men and teenagers, came together during the pandemic to discuss their shared love of guns, military gear, and video games.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Classified documents started appearing in the group late last year and continued through March where they spread across the internet from there.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The Washington Post interviewed several members, including a minor who spoke anonymously with permission from their parents.
--:-- [Audio clip of The Washington Post interview plays]
--:-- Gideon Resnick: I don't think that there was a goal nor some sort of accomplishment that he was looking for in sharing these documents. Of course, there's some anti-government sentiment, but that's not unlike most right-wingers in the modern day and age.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Teixeira is scheduled to appear in court for the first time later today in Boston. The investigation into the leak is still open and ongoing.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Authorities say they want to understand how a 21-year-old National Guardsman was able to access such top-secret material in the first place.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Millionaires and billionaires aren't just traveling to space. Now some are hoping to be the first real estate developers to build homes on the moon.
--:-- Spencer Bailey: Town and Country reporter Spencer Bailey writes about the new kind of space race looming on the horizon.
--:-- Spencer Bailey: We hear the term space race and you mostly think of engines and space shuttles and that kind of thing. But I actually think what all of that is leading to is innovation in other places and spaces, which is not only architecture, but real estate.
--:-- Spencer Bailey: The global space economy has massive potential. By one estimate, it's valued at a staggering $424 billion.
--:-- Spencer Bailey: And when I realized that, it became a lot less surprising to think that there are actively, in the case of this story, real estate agents all over the world who are now starting to think about, okay, I've done what I can here. What about the moon? What about Mars?
--:-- Spencer Bailey: Over the last decade or so, a Danish architect named Bjarke Ingels started asking that same question. He's a lifelong fan of sci-fi comics, and his firm has developed a reputation for pursuing all kinds of gutsy sci-fi-inspired projects.
--:-- Spencer Bailey: He built a high-rise in Manhattan that resembles a distorted pyramid and a power plant in Copenhagen topped with a ski slope. Now he wants to bring the same kind of real estate innovation to the moon.
--:-- Spencer Bailey: Part of his fascination with that is not just this notion of where are we going here on Earth, but where are we going in the universe, in the cosmos? And he kind of actively ran up on different people who are involved in that conversation and making that happen.
--:-- Spencer Bailey: One expert told Bailey it's not hard to imagine a future where people like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos own properties on the moon.
--:-- Spencer Bailey: And when Bailey asked an aerospace engineer at Rutgers about the realistic timeline for long-term living in space, he said we can expect to see people take extended stays on the moon within the next 10 years.
--:-- Spencer Bailey: With a few more decades, we could very well see the development of small towns or even a small city over the next century or two on the moon, which is pretty staggering when you think about it, but maybe not necessarily surprising given how fast some of this technology is developing.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The NBA playoffs will formally begin this weekend, and some of the league's biggest stars are in the mix once again.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Steph Curry, LeBron James, Joel Embiid, and Giannis Antetokounmpo, to name a few. So as of now, they are all thankfully healthy, after a season in which load management was a priority.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: That's a tactic where teams decide to sit players out for certain games in order to preserve their health for the playoffs. Essentially, they're playing the long game here, deciding what sacrifices they are willing to make during the regular season to optimize their chances of winning it all in the end.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But for some fans and ticket holders, it's been upsetting to not see their favorite players on the court as much as they'd like.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So to try to offset this trend, recently the NBA and the Players Association came to a new bargaining agreement.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: One of the stipulations is that players have to play a certain number of games to be considered for particular postseason awards.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Now, all the criticisms aside, the Wall Street Journal notes that load management does in fact seem to work.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: A few years back, Kawhi Leonard sat out nearly two dozen games before going on to play every playoff game and winning the championship.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Steph Curry, a big draw for fans across the U.S., sat out some games at the end of last season before another successful title run.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: This weekend, those two will once again start the long road to the finals.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And if you're listening in the News app right now, stick around. This week's episode of Apple News in Conversation about the case against Fox News is queued up to play next.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So sit back and check that out.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Thank you so much for hanging out with me this week. Shamita is going to be back with the news on Monday.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And that's a wrap for today's show.
