That’s the reality of the BBC’s approach to this dismissal. One of the most recognizable voices in British radio was abruptly removed from his breakfast show this week, with “an allegation relating to his personal conduct” given as the explanation.

Numerous articles full of speculation subsequently appeared. Everyone is talking about it, but nobody knows for sure what it is. The BBC (as of the date of publication) has not provided additional specific details, stating that “while we do not comment on matters relating to individuals, we can confirm Scott Mills is no longer contracted to work with the BBC.”

The BBC’s communication strategy here is a PR misstep indicative of the structural failures that have characterized numerous previous crises the organization has faced. It tells us a lot about how institutions think about risk, how badly they can misread it, and what happens when they lose narrative control. The more I look into this situation, the more I keep coming back to the same question:

Does the BBC know what it’s doing?

The answer is yes.

But not in the way you might think… and not in a way that suggests that what it is doing is good strategy.

This looks like a set of deliberate trade-offs.

Losing the narrative… or giving it away?

The narrative in the first 24-48 hours of a crisis sets the tone for media and public conversations. In the case of Scott Mills, the BBC handed narrative control to the media (and, consequently, social media) by way of issuing a vague statement. “Personal conduct” is doing a lot of heavy lifting when used to 'explain’ why someone was fired. It could be a serious criminal offense… or it could be throwing a pen at someone.

The firing indicates seriousness, but the vagueness of “personal conduct” does nothing to clarify the issue’s scope. We can infer that something happened, but not what kind of thing. The communication from BBC’s Director of Music Lorna Clarke was equally vague: she acknowledged that the news would be “sudden and unexpected and therefore must come as a shock,” adding that “While I appreciate many of you will have questions, I hope you can understand that I am not going to be saying anything further now.”

This lack of detail is very rarely accidental. The BBC has chosen to prioritize legal risk containment and institutional signaling (i.e., “We act quickly on allegations”). This is not an entirely unreasonable approach when considering the legal aspects and internal processes the BBC is likely somewhat constrained by, and the combination of decisive action and minimal disclosure isn’t necessarily unusual in cases involving serious yet unproven allegations… BUT, the specific way the BBC did it is a choice.

This is the action of an organization attempting to protect itself rather than (a) provide narrative clarity and (b) prioritize fair treatment.

Incompetence doesn’t look like this… overcorrection does

If you want to understand how an organisation loses control of a narrative, you only need to look at the first 48 hours of this story. But if you want to understand why they chose to lose control, you have to look at the decisions they made before the story broke. A failure to control a narrative can be interpreted as incompetence…

But incompetence doesn’t look like this.

Look at the timeline.

The BBC took Mills off air on March 24 with no explanation, then fired him six days later, issuing its single, vague statement about “personal conduct” on Monday morning without defining the nature of the allegations, the timeframe, whether they were criminal, what process was followed, etc. Several news outlets began reporting that the allegations related to a “historic relationship”. By evening, The Mirror was reporting that it “understood” the allegations were connected to a 2016 police investigation. The Metropolitan Police issued a statement confirming that an investigation was opened in December 2016, that Mills was questioned under caution in July 2018, that the Crown Prosecution Service found insufficient evidence, and that the investigation was closed in May 2019. (You can look up the articles for more details here… I’m writing this to discuss crisis management/comms approaches, not to add to speculation, so I’m deliberately not including unproven information.)

By Tuesday, the narrative escalated again. The Telegraph reported that a freelance journalist had contacted the BBC in May 2025, asking whether it had received any complaints about Mills regarding safeguarding or inappropriate conduct. The BBC had not responded and issued an apology: “We received a press query in 2025 which included limited information. This should have been followed up and we should have asked further questions. We apologise for this and will look into why this did not happen.” They also confirmed these allegations were separate from those that led to Mills being fired.

In less than 48 hours, the story went from personal conduct to historic relationship to police investigation to the BBC knew in 2025 and ignored it, each step driven by media reporting, not BBC disclosure.

That sequence reads like an institution that saw an issue coming, or realized it had already mishandled a warning sign, and chose a very specific path anyway.

It is entirely possible that the BBC did not have all the facts, let alone verified ones, about the Scott Mills situation when they acted. Investigations are messy, information is often incomplete or conflicting, and legal advice can point in multiple directions at once. Operating in the dark is a normal part of crisis management, but choosing to fire someone immediately and say absolutely nothing concrete about why is a calculated choice.

The BBC weighed their legal exposure, institutional reputation, and the speed of the news cycle, and they made a bet that moving decisively and staying almost silent would protect them, seeking the optics of acting quickly while avoiding the vulnerability of explaining what they were acting on.

You can’t have both.

You can’t claim the moral high ground of accountability and hide behind opacity.

When people see severe action combined with no explanation, they fill the gap with the worst plausible option.

This is the biggest mistake here, from a crisis management and communications perspective. Acting quickly while withholding details. Every action in a crisis sends a message, and the BBC sent two very strong yet very mismatched ones. The first, communicated through the immediate termination without visible process, said, ‘This is serious’. The second was: “We won’t explain why.”

When an institution says “we’ve taken serious action, but we won’t say why,” it creates a substantial information vacuum that will be filled by journalists piecing together fragments of information, whatever they can get from anonymous sources, comparisons to past scandals, etc. Social media speculation runs alongside this, as the public crowdsources theories and spreads worst-case interpretations, since the ambiguity of the situation practically invites it. Past events get reinterpreted through a new lens, and previous encounters get reframed as suspicious.

While it does make sense that the BBC (or any institution) would be reluctant to share too much information in a situation like this, as much of it is likely to be confidential, the resulting information vacuum can cause substantial harm to both the institution and the person who has been fired. It’s a myth that silence or excessive constraint in messaging necessarily equals control (it can, in certain circumstances, but not in situations like this). The logic is, “If we don’t say it, it isn’t on the record; if it isn’t on the record, we can’t be sued for it; if we can’t be sued for it, we are managing risk.” But in Mills’s case and others like it, ambiguity itself creates harm because silence/excessive messaging constraint redistributes risk rather than neutralizing it.

When an organization is facing a crisis like this, which would be categorized as a potentially preventable crisis associated with high reputation risk, the response of corrective action (termination) potentially addresses the issue but doesn’t do anything for the public narrative when it’s paired with ambiguous attribution of responsibility. The BBC used corrective action without narrative in their response, thereby increasing ambiguity, which increases perceived severity and reputational damage before we even know the reality of the situation.

This is an unusual approach. Corrective action is typically paired with an explanation of what happened and why an action was taken. Without that explanation, the action itself becomes the only signal, and the audience will reverse-engineer the story from the severity of the response.

The mistake: Assuming less information equals less risk. In this case, it meant less control.

But the BBC knew this would happen.

If an organization knows enough to terminate a major contract with immediate effect, what exactly do they not know that prevents them from explaining the category of the offense?

If the BBC rushed this decision based on incomplete information, then the vagueness of their statement is a smokescreen for a poor leadership choice. When an institution fires someone before they have a fully defensible, explainable reason, they cannot offer clarity because that would expose the weakness of their position, so they’re forced to use vague language because specificity would reveal that they acted prematurely. It’s plausible that they were ‘spooked’ and wanted to be seen doing something, so they pulled the trigger. If that’s the case, it’s a far more serious institutional failure than writing a bad press release, because it suggests that the organization is willing to sacrifice fair process for the appearance of decisive action.

The BBC’s credibility problem

To understand why a massive, well-resourced institution would make such a flawed calculation, you have to look at what they are running away from. When an institution survives a massive public scandal, it absorbs a collective psychological trauma. The people who remain internalize a new set of rules. The primary rule becomes: Never let that happen again.

For the BBC, the defining institutional trauma is Jimmy Savile. The corporation was rightly accused of a culture of secrecy, of protecting talent over victims, and of moving too slowly to address open secrets. The institutional lesson learned was that slow, protective responses are fatal. So the pendulum swings… They become so focused on proving they aren’t making the old mistake that they walk blindly into a new one that sacrifices clarity.

The BBC has an existing credibility deficit shaped by past failures, so every new case gets interpreted through the lens of what happened before. What this looks like is an overcorrection, where the instinct to act decisively and visibly has outrun the ability to communicate clearly and, perhaps, make the right decisions. Institutional trauma from past scandals can lead a corporation to take substantial (and public) actions and make communications before the facts are clear and the messaging is fully developed. The inconsistency in handling situations like this damages public trust in a way that compounds over time.

The BBC’s current credibility crisis is two-fold: can it be trusted with safeguarding, and can it be trusted with fairness?

People ask, “How did this happen?”, while also asking, “Are individuals being treated justly?” These issues can pull in opposite directions. And the BBC has yet to find a stable middle ground.

The human cost

It’s worth looking at what happens when organizations and individuals choose different levels of disclosure, because the pattern is consistent. When Huw Edwards’s situation emerged, serious allegations were made, but a more specific framing followed relatively quickly, including details about payments, images, and the subject matter. The story was intense, but bounded. Public debate focused on legality and ethics rather than pure speculation because there was concrete material to discuss

When Philip Schofield left ITV, he pre-emptively disclosed the nature of his relationship with a younger colleague, the timeline, and acknowledged wrongdoing. The media coverage was fast and brutal, but shorter-lived and more defined. His admission limited the unknowns, even though it confirmed wrongdoing. He owned the narrative early, which matters. A lot.

With Scott Mills, we have severe organizational action and minimal official detail, but no clearly defined allegation or established facts. That combination is rare and volatile, from a comms and perception perspective. The story doesn’t have a shape, so the public and the media give it one. This is where the BBC’s strategy has the most complex consequences for the individual at the center of a scandal.

Because the BBC said little, Mills is defined by implication rather than fact. He cannot easily rebut specifics because none are formally stated. He’s trapped in what I’d call a shadow accusation. It’s serious enough to end his career, but vague enough that it can’t be clearly defended against. Paradoxically, less detail can lead to greater personal damage. A specific allegation can be evaluated. A vague, serious allegation invites the worst possible assumptions, and the firing amplifies this narrative as the more serious the action taken, the worse the assumed behavior. New ‘revelations’ emerge over days or weeks, creating a prolonged, slow-burning crisis that is often more psychologically and reputationally damaging than a single disclosure. The institution speaks once, then withdraws. The individual faces continuous scrutiny without an equivalent platform.

For Mills, his public identity shifts from long-time Radio 2 presenter to “person at the center of an undefined scandal.” Without concrete details, that identity is broad, sticky, and hard to correct. It’s often the worst possible reputational position: publicly sanctioned, but not publicly explained.

What the BBC could have done instead

The BBC didn’t need to litigate the details publicly, but they did need to define the category of the problem. We don’t know yet if any of the speculative media reports represent reality, but using them as a potential, the BBC could have said something along the lines of “a historic allegation relating to [broad category],” or “a non-criminal but serious breach of conduct,” or “a matter previously investigated by police with no charges.” These types of statements, which do not veer into potential defamation/legal issues territory but still provide enough information to constrain speculation and reduce narrative drift, protect both parties more effectively than a vague statement.

They also needed to anchor the process, not just the outcome. Explaining when the complaint was received, whether it was new or historic, and what process was followed reassures audiences that the decision wasn’t arbitrary. Right now, the messaging collapses the allegation into the corrective action. A better structure separates them: an allegation was received, investigated under a defined process, and, according to the BBC’s standards (not a criminal threshold), the contract was ended. That clarifies that this is an employment decision rather than a legal verdict.

UK libel law is strict, and employment confidentiality is a legal requirement; the BBC also operates under editorial guidelines that constrain what it can say. But these constraints don’t fully explain the communication failure in this case. Legal safety shouldn’t be the only metric you’re considering when issuing a public statement, as statements have a substantial impact on public discourse and, consequently, the individuals involved. These aspects must be considered, and it appears the BBC chose not to.

The BBC doesn’t have a stable, trusted middle ground between protecting individuals, protecting the institution, and informing the public.

It appears to be intentionally taking decisive action as an overcorrection of past failures with messaging shaped by fear of legal risk. Are they prioritizing self-protection over fair treatment, hiding behind legal or procedural constraints to justify it? They had options. Did they choose the one that protected them most, consequences for Mills be damned?

The consequences for the individual at the center of this crisis are devastating, especially if the situation turns out not to be related to the allegations being spread in the trial-by-media that the information vacuum has created.

I have two main questions in my mind at the moment:

Does the BBC trust its own processes? If an organization can’t clearly communicate a narrative, can we reasonably conclude that it is confident in its management of the situation? It might know what it is doing, but if it can’t publicly stand behind those processes… there’s a trust issue there.

Does the BBC take the duty of care to its employees seriously? Being fired in a very public way, with vague statements resulting in extensive media and public speculation about what you might have done, is extremely stressful, and Scott Mills might not be able to publicly comment. Apparently, he’s currently ‘impossible to contact’, which is concerning. The BBC could have handled this in a less damaging way by providing less to speculate about.

And if the BBC doesn’t have the full story, if it acted prematurely on a potential issue that it can’t define because it doesn’t yet have all the details itself… firing Scott Mills publicly was a catastrophic mistake that goes substantially beyond vague communication.

Right now, we have a situation where a man’s reputation has been severely damaged… and the public still doesn’t know why.

[This is a developing story, so I will probably have more to say on it as more information comes out.]

What I’m doing here is using the reasons Cabot’s narrative isn’t landing to help you avoid the same mistakes yourself.

When we end up at the center of a viral scandal, it’s not unusual to come out of that wanting to use our experience to raise awareness of a specific issue related to it. I have clients doing exactly that, and effectively (which includes some occasional backlash, because there is no perfect fix that takes you from scandal to 100% positive reactions).

Where we can get this really wrong is in how we craft the narrative around that message. If we perceive ourselves to be the victim but our audience overwhelmingly doesn’t, that victimhood is an ineffective starting point for an awareness campaign. If we recognize that we’re qualified to speak on an issue because of our experience with it, but maintain our focus on rehashing the details of our issue and how it affected us… we make it look like we want to clear our name, not help others or highlight a broader concern.

When our focus is in the wrong place, our message gets lost, and our audience gets ‘stuck’ on the original issue. Not because they’re out to get us, but because we’re unintentionally telling them that’s what we want them to be looking at.

Burying your own message

The People Magazine coverage of Cabot’s interview with Oprah pulled out a statement Cabot made about wanting to turn her experience “into something positive to keep that conversation alive and try to figure out — why are we doing this to each other?”, referencing her desire to highlight her perception that the way she was treated indicates an issue with women not supporting women:

“I'm heartbroken at how women are treating other women,” she went on to say. “I just think we're holding each other back. Let's stop,” she said. “And I think it's a conversation that needs to be had over and over right now. What is going on with us as a gender that we take such pleasure in holding each other back and hurting each other? It’s really scary.”

Cabot is referring to the fallout from the viral video that led to her resignation. Internet sleuths found her and Byron’s home addresses and spouses’ LinkedIn profiles, a local radio station broadcast Cabot’s home address on air, Paparazzi camped outside her house for weeks, her teenage children overheard death threats on their mother’s phone, and internet commenters circulated the narrative that she’d slept her way to the top in her career. This experience has made her want to talk about what the internet does to real people, the disproportionate and gendered nature of online shaming, the fact that no mistake, however public or embarrassing, warrants death threats and harassment, that women aren’t supporting women.

This is the story Kristin Cabot wants to tell.

(Is it the one I’d advise her to tell if I were working with her? Perhaps not, but that’s a topic for a different discussion.)

There are important and true things that Cabot has to say about her experience.

And the comments section of the People Magazine article shows us that almost nobody heard them.

The comments are overwhelmingly negative, indicating that the public is largely unsympathetic to Cabot, with an emotional tone dominated by judgment. Commenters criticize Cabot’s actions, her decision to do the interview, and Oprah’s involvement. They express frustration that this story is still in the news and categorize it as Cabot’s attempt to extend her ‘15 minutes of fame’ (a risk of which Cabot indicated she was aware). They lean into moral outrage, condemning infidelity and highlighting the impact on the families involved. While sympathy is a common emotional tone in the comments, it is directed toward the spouses and children involved, not Cabot herself. Many commenters express contempt toward Cabot and a lack of respect for her attempts to reframe the narrative.

The dominant themes in the commentary highlight a demand for accountability and a rejection of celebrity culture, with many specifically targeting Oprah for platforming the story. Personal responsibility is the most relevant theme regarding Cabot herself, with the recurring argument that, as a consenting adult and Head of HR, she should accept the consequences of her public actions rather than blaming others. Commenters are actively pushing back against Cabot’s self-framing as a victim. Several suggest that Cabot is engaging in a PR campaign to monetize the situation or prolong her notoriety.

“She isn’t owed an apology from anyone; she (and her boss) was caught in public doing bad things that they BOTH knew was wrong. As a woman, she is calling out women but blaming her boss for supposedly telling her he was separating. If society could use social media to see that wasn’t true why couldn’t she.

She is missing the attention - this is just a ploy for more press. Disappointed that Oprah even gave her an avenue to get more attention.” — Comment from user IMHO

That focus on women supporting women? Barely commented on at all, and where it is, largely unfavorably.

Cabot’s message is real; I do believe that the ‘something positive’ she wants to achieve from this experience is awareness around the effects of online backlash. I also agree with what said about not blaming the public when you’re criticized and that Cabot’s thinking might be missing the mark after Cabot’s December 2025 NYT article. But that’s besides the point, because regardless of whether I agree with her narrative, it’s what she’s doing that’s burying it herself that I want to help you avoid.

What went wrong?

The Timing

The original incident was in July 2025, Cabot’s first public statement (in NYT) in December 2025, and the Oprah interview in March 2026.

Cabot mentioned in the interview that a PR advisor told her to stay quiet, let time pass, and then speak, which isn’t wrong advice in isolation, but it only works if the silence is complete and the eventual reemergence is strategic. Cabot stayed quiet long enough for the story to begin fading naturally, and then reignited it herself. Twice. With herself as the victim of public backlash at the center.

The NYT piece, “The Ritual Shaming of the Woman at the Coldplay Concert,” was a little more focused on the systemic cruelty of internet backlash vs. Cabot’s personal narrative, unlike the Oprah interview. The latter may have brought anyone moved toward sympathy by the NYT article back to frustration over accountability. Cabot might want to bring attention to the effects of online backlash, but the danger in her approach is that it reignites the backlash itself right when people had almost forgotten about it.

Her timing is both too late and too early. Her current narrative and the negative response to it, if released closer to July 2025, would at least have been contained within the original backlash. As it is now, it’s bringing the original backlash back with little benefit to Cabot in terms of the issue she wants to highlight because she’s clearly still too involved in the fallout from that to separate what happened to her from the messaging she wants to spread moving forward.

When you do speak after silence, you need to be sure that what you’re saying is worth the cost of the attention it will attract. Attention is a double-edged sword when your name is still synonymous with a viral scandal. If it’s too soon for you to have been able to emotionally separate the effects of what happened to you from the learning you want to share, you’re at risk of pulling all the attention back to the original issue and having your ‘something positive’ categorized as an excuse or ‘spin’ to absolve you of responsibility for your original behavior.

There is also danger in perceiving the success of one public statement, media article, or interview, then getting ‘energized’ by that in a way that makes you want to do more prematurely and without sufficient strategy. One of my clients put out a public statement that was so well received that even I was surprised by the positive sentiment, and then wanted to add another to ‘finish’ the story. I spent hours looking at the content that was supposed to go into that piece and had to tell her we couldn’t use any of it because it would undermine everything the first one did and completely overshadow the rest of her messaging.

The Details

The Oprah interview is structured in three parts: the backstory of Cabot’s relationship with Byron, the night of the concert and its immediate aftermath, and broader reflections on online backlash and women’s treatment of other women. The first two parts are so long and so focused on Cabot’s personal experience that by the time we get to the third, the audience has already formed a judgment.

Cabot spends a significant portion of the interview explaining, in granular detail, how her relationship with Byron developed. Every detail she gives is a gift to the people who want to make memes out of her. Her revelation that Byron may not have actually been separated (“a lot of what was represented to me was not true”) comes across as an attempt to win sympathy. This type of detailed discussion happens when we think that if we can just explain the context clearly enough, people will understand and forgive and leave us alone. It’s a misjudgment that lack of information is the cause of the backlash. In this case (and maybe yours, depending on what you’re working with), the public isn’t reacting to a lack of information but the moral judgment they’ve made based on the situation itself. More information about the circumstances of the relationship doesn’t change this; it gives them more material to argue with.

The qualified accountability

Cabot does say, repeatedly, that she made a mistake, with apparent sincerity… But.

The acknowledgment is almost always followed by a ‘but’ sentiment. She made a mistake, but she was separated. She made a mistake, but he told her he was separated too. She made a mistake, but she “didn’t hear Chris Martin say we’re going to pan the audience”. She made a mistake, but she would have turned away from any jumbotron because she’s “not a jumbotron girl.”

This is counterproductive because it tells your audience you haven’t fully accepted responsibility and are still somewhat negotiating with the verdict.

If you want to share what you’ve learned about a situation where you’re perceived to be responsible, you cannot achieve focus on what you want your audience to be thinking about if you don’t lead with accountability. The focus will stay on your lack of accountability.

The blame-shifting

Perhaps the most self-defeating moment in the Oprah interview is Cabot’s focus on Gwyneth Paltrow and Ryan Reynolds. After the scandal, Astronomer’s new leadership leaned into the chaos and worked with Reynolds’ marketing company, Maximum Effort, to produce a deadpan ad for Astronomer with Paltrow. Much of the sentiment around this ad indicated that it was perceived as clever and self-aware. A win for Astronomer.

Cabot tells Oprah she was disappointed in Paltrow, whose brand is built on uplifting women. She calls the ad hypocritical and unnecessary, adding that she doesn’t want to “let Ryan Reynolds off the hook either,” noting that his wife Blake Lively “has just gone through something really similar over the last year” (I’m still trying to grasp exactly what the similarities are that Cabot is referring to here and could potentially write an entire article on that one comment).

This is how to make yourself look bad while trying to make a point.

Paltrow and Reynolds are not the villains of this story. Astronomer hired them to make a marketing joke. Cabot quite effectively shifts the public’s sympathy away from her and toward the celebrities she is criticizing, making her advocacy look personal rather than principled, as if the real issue is not online cruelty in general but the specific people who she feels wronged her. She also blames them but not explicitly Astronomer for how they handled (or, rather, didn’t) the backlash.

Cabot’s quick remark about how she’s “not the biggest fan” of Coldplay anymore and how this incident “ruined” them for her may have been intended to come across as a little light humor, but when you pair it with her later, much more seriously phrased comment on how she didn’t hear Chris Martin say that the jumbotron was panning the audience suggests that she is on some level shifting blame to Coldplay. That she didn’t know she might be seen implies that it’s being caught that she’s concerned with, not what she was doing, coming back to that lack of accountability.

The ‘women supporting women’ narrative

Cabot’s description of the gendered nature of the backlash she received is emotionally resonant. She describes women approaching her in public to harass her. She describes it as more devastating than almost anything else, learning how “unwell we are as a gender,” as she puts it. There is research (one example) showing that women police other women’s sexual and romantic behavior more harshly than men do. The ‘other women’ in cheating scandals tend to be more of a target of public rage than the men who cheated. So the double standard is real and worthy of discussion.

But Cabot’s framing of it undermines the point she’s trying to make because she presents the women’s anger as irrational, a kind of collective psychological dysfunction and a projection of their own fears onto her. She says she wants to sit down with some of these women and “really listen and try to understand what it is about me or what it is.” And it doesn’t seem like an inviting conversation.

Painting this anger as irrational and as though it is about Cabot personally ignores the fact that it stems from empathy for Byron’s wife and for every woman in that position. When Oprah gently points this out, noting that Cabot became “the face of the woman who took my husband” for a lot of women who have been cheated on, Cabot acknowledges it intellectually but does not seem to fully absorb it emotionally, saying, “they don’t know me. It can’t really be me, but it’s something I represent.”

If you want to talk about why women attack other women online, you have to be willing to acknowledge the legitimate grievance underneath their response. You have to say, “I understand why women who have been betrayed by their partners saw themselves in Andy Byron’s wife. I understand why that pain was directed at me.” You can’t alienate the group you’re trying to advocate for.

Cabot never quite gets there. She keeps pulling back toward her own hurt feelings, which makes the audience feel like the empathy she is asking for is for her and not for women in general.

A different approach

Doing this well and shifting from ‘person at center of scandal’ to ‘advocate for issue related to scandal’ requires accepting the counterintuitive truth that the more you try to clear your name, the more you keep your name in the story; the more you focus on the issue, the more your name fades into the background.

And this is exactly what you need if you want people to hear your message.

Start with a brief, unqualified acknowledgment of the mistake (none of the “I made a mistake but” statements, just “I made a mistake”). Explicitly acknowledge the harm done (e.g., in this case, to Byron’s wife) as a genuine expression of remorse. Then move directly to the issue itself. Cabot could have talked about the mechanics of how a 15-second clip becomes 300 billion views, the financial incentives that platforms have to amplify outrage, the documented reality that women bear a disproportionate share of internet mob justice, and the concrete, terrifying consequences for real families…

When you stop centering yourself as the subject of the discussion and start being the messenger for what you’ve learned, you’re speaking to your audience in a way that’s going to help them see you as a person telling them something they need to hear, not a person they need to judge. Focus on other people’s experiences and how those factor into the issue you are highlighting, so the narrative is built on the broader effects of the issue and not on you and how it specifically affected you. This is how you show that the issue is larger than you, and it will land better.

The People Magazine comment section shows where Cabot went wrong in the themes that came up around personal responsibility, victimhood, criticism, frustration, and moral outrage. This is an audience that felt manipulated. They wanted advocacy, something larger than Kristin Cabot’s personal narrative, and got… more of Kristin Cabot’s personal narrative. They felt the advocacy framing was being used as a shield rather than a genuine cause.

That is the biggest risk when you go into advocacy after a public scandal. When you’ve made a public mistake and want to use that experience to say something meaningful about the systems involved in that mistake, you cannot be the victim and the advocate at the same time. The moment you are asking for sympathy for yourself, you are no longer asking people to think about the issue. You are asking them to think about you. And if they are already predisposed to judge you, that is a fight you will lose every time.

You have to separate your personal experience from the cause you want to champion, or you end up with a real cause and a messenger who keeps getting in the way of it.

Stop asking whether you deserved what happened to you and start asking whether anyone deserves it, then lead with that.

Usually, there’s nuance to it. They did something, but it wasn’t what it was interpreted as. Perhaps a completely innocent act interpreted as a threat, or a decision made for valid institutional reasons that ends up looking like it was targeted against someone.

This article isn’t about cases involving people who refuse to admit to wrongdoing, but ones where the accusation is genuinely incorrect or misconstrued. If you’ve just been massively misinterpreted or falsely accused and are thinking, “What now?” or “How do I handle this without making it worse?”, this is for you.

I didn’t do that

When we have a misunderstanding, we rarely have a clear-cut ‘villain’ in the story. The pattern I see most often is one side feeling they’ve been wronged in some way (leading to the accusation), and the other feeling they’ve been attacked or targeted (by the accuser) over a misjudgment. What we’re often working with is two sets of people looking at the exact same set of facts and coming away with entirely different realities.

An incorrect allegation of wrongdoing can feel like it comes out of nowhere, and most of the time, nobody gets the full picture. There’s a vacuum of certainty where the conflicting narratives of each side bolster the opposing opinions. The first instinct is to fix it and defend yourself because you know you didn’t do it or what your intent was behind what’s been misinterpreted. It makes sense to think that if you just had the chance to clearly explain everything, you’d be understood and the issue would no longer exist.

But the simple, clear explanation often doesn’t work. When a person feels threatened or wronged, even if that feeling comes from a misconception, they’re looking for confirmation that their interpretation was correct, not evidence supporting the alternate narrative. Everything you say gets filtered through the lens of the accusation that has already been made, and you can come across as trying to manipulate the situation rather than conclude it.

We do this because we think reason and fairness fundamentally exist and that if we continue to share reality—our reality—others will also begin to occupy it. But they don’t, because we’re trying to characterize our perception as reality while they’re characterizing theirs as reality. Actual reality is somewhere in the middle, and if you don’t work with the perceptions, neither side will ever see it.

Why denial fails to fix

Without a clear, objective resolution, we keep trying to reconstruct a version of events that makes sense. Unfortunately, human nature tends to favor the more dramatic, negative explanation over the boring reality of a simple misunderstanding or miscommunication. The most careful response acknowledging the other person’s feelings, explaining what actually happened, providing context or evidence, and expressing regret that the situation occurred… can fail to change the narrative. This response isn’t defensive, but the recipient and anyone observing may still hear something different: denial. Denial, when dealing with accusations, often gets interpreted as guilt.

The mental shortcut we often use in ambiguous situations is to assume that if someone strongly denies something, they must have something to hide. Why are they fighting so hard if it’s just a misunderstanding? There’s no smoke without fire. Even if they didn’t mean it, the other person must have reacted that way for a reason.

It feels like a trap and can make you feel even more victimized when accused of something you haven’t done, that you can’t even defend yourself because it just makes you look worse, or your explanation becomes part of the story and gets picked apart just as much as the accusation, increasing the suspicion and essentially doing the opposite of what you wanted to achieve. It also feels extremely personal. How could anyone believe I could do this? Don’t people know me?

The most pressing challenge seems to be, “How do I get people to see that I’m right so they’ll believe me?”

It’s not.

In fact, approaching this with that goal is unlikely to get you anywhere.

The first (and, unfortunately, most difficult) thing you need to do when you’re accused of something you didn’t do is to accept that being right doesn’t guarantee being believed.

How to not make it worse

If you find yourself in this situation, stop digging. The more you speak, the more material you provide for misinterpretation. Forget about clarification and convincing the other side that they’re wrong, and shift your focus to containing the narrative and preventing escalation. This means stepping back and avoiding back-and-forth discourse or trying to correct every misperception. You can’t control the other side’s narrative, just your participation in it, and if you’re not participating in a conversation, that conversation will eventually end.

You need one core and consistent message along the lines of:

Then silence.

It may feel like you’re not defending yourself, even that you’re admitting to something you didn’t do, as though a 10-page email would do a better job, but you are defending yourself, you’re not admitting anything, and that email would NOT make anything better. I’m going to say that again because I know how easy it is to type these things and think you’ve got the ultimate solution: It would NOT make anything better.

But didn’t I just say that denial wouldn’t fix anything?

Yes, I did. This statement isn’t a fix. It’s a response that doesn’t make the situation worse, and there’s a difference. This article isn’t about fixing because there is no fix when there’s a narrative about you that you can’t correct.

What I want to help you with most here is not the communication, but the “What’s next?” when you’re accused of something you didn’t do. Because moving forward and getting past the situation is the only aspect you have full control over, and it can be difficult to feel like you have any agency in that when you’ve been misjudged. And one of the hardest parts of being accused of something you didn’t do is the feeling of being misjudged in a way that can never be repaired. We feel we need the record corrected, and if we can’t achieve that, it can affect our identity. I’ve known more than one person accused of something they didn’t do end up feeling as guilty as they would have if they’d done it, essentially from absorbing the accusations as an attack on their real character and believing that the characterization was true, even though they knew it wasn’t.

This is especially true if the accusation had practical consequences. You begin imagining an alternate timeline in which the misunderstanding never happened. Maybe you would have stayed in that job. Maybe that relationship would have lasted. Maybe your reputation would be intact. You construct a parallel universe where everything went right, and you were happy and secure. That this one moment of misjudgment changed everything, and if you could go back and do something about it, your entire life would be fixed. If you’d just known that you’d be taken that way, you’d have acted differently.

Counterfactual timelines like this just keep you stuck because not only can you not go back and do things differently, but imagining a reality that could have been gets you stuck in the past and fixated on an overly positive outlook on a potential. When we imagine what could have been, we tend to only imagine the good possibilities. Difficulties and uncertainties don’t factor in, and we imagine the alternate reality as brighter and more successful than it likely would have been.

When we do this, we get stuck on how that one moment of misjudgment changed everything, and that perspective prevents us from engaging fully with the present and from building a meaningful future.

There are three steps to changing your perspective that will help you continue on the ‘not making it worse’ path and getting through the other side:

• Avoiding blame

• Accepting information asymmetry

• Accepting that you may never be understood

Avoiding blame

Blame shows up in several ways in these situations: self-blame, blaming the accuser, and blaming observers who don’t believe you. All of these will trap you.

Self-blame

Self-blame places you as your harshest critic and has you sitting awake at 3 am thinking that you ‘should have known’ you’d be interpreted that way? OK. Even if that were the case, you didn’t know, otherwise you would’ve acted differently. Why would you blame yourself even when you know you didn’t do anything wrong? Because doing that gives us an illusion of control. If we spin the story to ourselves as “I made the wrong decision,” the situation feels preventable, implying that if we’re more analytical and careful in the future, we can protect ourselves from similar pain. But that conclusion usually depends on hindsight. You’re judging your past decision with information you didn’t have at the time.

You forget the context and the fact you had no reason to suspect it would be misinterpreted, judging your past self with the clarity of present understanding and failing to recognize that you did the best you could with the information and resources you had available.

Take that ‘should have known’ and turn it into ‘what I’ll do in the future’. It’s a data point for learning, not a weapon to use against your past self.

Blaming others

If you don’t self-blame, you might blame-shift. In fact, you might self-blame and blame-shift at the same time, which is extremely psychologically frustrating. When we’re accused of something we didn’t do, we often blame the accuser for misinterpreting us and observers for believing them, assuming they’re all malicious or out to get us. You’ll see this when someone gets ‘cancelled’ and blames 'the public.

Blaming people gets you trapped in a victim cycle where everyone else is the villain, and it seems to be helpful because it absolves you of any responsibility for navigating the fallout, but THAT is the damaging avoidance that you need to get out of to stop feeling powerless to your situation. The way out is with agency. If you’re waiting for the world to wake up and apologize to you, you stay anchored to the injustice of the accusation and can’t move into the acceptance and action stage.

We blame others primarily because we characterize the misinterpretation as substantially more personal than it actually is. The way around this is to accept that people generally aren’t intentionally out to get you. They’re usually not people who actively dislike you and find ways to use that against you; in fact, they might have liked you a lot before they perceived you to have done something harmful. They are usually operating with insufficient information, or they are dealing with misinformation. They are viewing your actions through the lens of their own past experiences and biases, just as you interpret others’ actions through yours. In many cases, their interpretation of your actions, while factually incorrect, is an entirely reasonable and rational conclusion based on the limited data they have available.

They aren’t evil. They’re human, reacting to the world as they see it, just as you are. Seeing them as more neutral and their accusation as less personal helps you break the cycle.

You cannot rebuild your life if you are entirely focused on tearing down the people who broke it.

Accepting information asymmetry

Building on the avoiding-blame perspective, you have to accept that the other person is operating with a different set of facts or, at least, a different interpretation of those facts. You can’t force anyone to see anything through your eyes or understand your intent. Not fighting against information asymmetry feels like letting them ‘get away with it’, but it will only keep you stuck in the situation. They’re not experiencing the same reality you are, and demanding understanding is asking them to abandon their own reality and adopt yours. That is a psychological impossibility in the same way that it’s hard for you to understand their accusation.

You have to find a way to be okay with the fact that someone out there holds a fundamentally incorrect view of you. Not to agree with them or accept that their view is valid, but to acknowledge that it exists and that you don’t have the power or responsibility to change it. If this seems impossible, consider this: That person is probably not even thinking about you very much, at least not as much as you’re thinking about the situation. Many misunderstandings never ‘come back’. The other person has already moved on; observers have found a new drama to focus on. The only place the story remains open might be in YOUR mind.

This acceptance gives you agency because your peace of mind no longer depends on their understanding (which you can’t have any control over), and you can start focusing on the things you can actually control in your behavior and boundaries and future.

Accepting that you may never be understood

From a rational perspective, it makes sense that you want to eventually find a resolution where you’re absolved of all wrongdoing and everyone believes you, but human judgment rarely works that way (just look at how people can watch the exact same video footage online and come to opposing conclusions). Once you’ve been accused of something and your credibility or character has been called into question, you’re always going to have people who believe the other side’s narrative. Your job is to accept that that narrative exists.

Once someone believes they have been wronged, they get into protective mode, and distancing themselves feels safer than investigating further, so they prioritize their safety and comfort over understanding you. And that doesn’t mean they’re being malicious or unfair. It’s considerably less personal than it feels—it’s human instinct. It’s uncomfortable to accept because it removes the possibility that a perfect explanation could have solved everything, but it gives you a way forward, learning to live with the fact that some people will hold interpretations of you that are based on incomplete information.

If you think that is impossible… you’re already doing. Every day. In every interaction. Ask 10 people to describe you, and you’ll get 10 completely different descriptions with different levels of incorrect assumptions in them, because we all misunderstand each other all the time and see each other as how we’ve perceived each other according to our own biases and experiences. There are people who think you’re an asshole, but you’ll never know it. There are people who love absolutely everything about you… and will never tell you. Nobody fully knows you, and that’s OK. All our judgments are made on limited data.

The most productive perspective shift is to stop trying to control other people’s interpretations and focus on your own response by recognizing where you still have agency. As long as you crave vindication that you’re not going to get, you stay in the past. So accept that other people made sense of the situation using the information available to them and that their interpretation may never change. Focus on the one part of the story that remains within your control, i.e., how much of your future this situation is allowed to occupy, to take away the misunderstanding’s power to define you.

The takeaway

Your work here, eventually, is learning to release the psychological effects of the accusation and recognize that misunderstanding and judgment are separate things, that a collision of perspectives or communication failure is almost always considerably less personal than it feels, and that you’re not defined by a mischaracterization. Everything you’ve learned is an opportunity to be better than you were before this happened, so don’t let a focus on ‘being right’ keep you in the past.

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Negotiated separation agreements like this are not uncommon. They happen for various reasons, primarily ones that benefit both the institution and the employee. A formal termination carries legal and reputational risks for the employer, as a fired employee can more easily claim wrongful termination and is free to speak publicly about the circumstances. Allowing a resignation with an NDA reduces that exposure and keeps the underlying reasons quiet. For the employee, a resignation and references free from mentions of the reason they left preserve their professional reputation.

Until they don’t.

The Mistake

Resigning only protects your reputation in the context of what you did that necessitated it. The biggest mistake is assuming that reputational risk ends there. How you handle the narrative when you can’t tell the truth is actually your biggest reputational risk. People have a tendency to turn a ‘quiet’ resignation into a loud issue in the way they talk about what happened.

When you leave under a negotiated separation, the narrative is fractured. You have the truth (which you can’t tell) or silence (which feels unnatural). And then you have all the pieces surrounding the situation that could fit with the truth without explicitly sharing it, but don’t make sense as a stand-alone story.

We’re fundamentally uncomfortable with narrative voids and inconsistencies (both as the person telling the story and the person listening). That’s why, in reputation management, these are things we want to avoid. They make our story harder to ‘sell’ and create doubt in the minds of anyone listening. But an NDA that takes telling the truth out of the equation makes it extremely difficult to reconcile the narrative in a way that feels authentic. When asked, “Why did you leave?” we panic. Silence feels like an admission of guilt, even if we know the other person doesn’t know what we might be guilty of.

So we construct cover stories to fill that void, crafting plausible yet untrue reasons for the departure. The problem lies in the execution because we know the narrative is a fabrication, and that knowledge creates an overwhelming psychological need to make it believable, making us overexplain with unnecessary details and offer justifications without being asked. We might even bring up the job change ourselves and explain ‘why’ it happened to someone who would not even have known that we used to work there.

This is a mistake because it sounds defensive and rehearsed from the start. It tells the person you’re talking to that there’s more to the story and invites scrutiny, rather than what we actually want: to avoid questions. A long, contrived description invites questions. A boring one signals that there’s nothing to ask more about. When we’re asked questions and feel we have to double down on our explanation, adding even more to it to cover up the truth we can’t tell, we end up with an inconsistent narrative. Inconsistencies expose holes in our story, damaging trust. People don’t need to know what is in those holes to lose trust. They can sense when something doesn’t quite add up.

This happens a lot because we want to blend the truth in with our ‘cover’ story. Lying is stressful, even if it’s mandated, so we try to incorporate as many true elements as possible to make it feel more authentic.

Then, we have to do constant ‘maintenance’ on the narrative to avoid inconsistencies, and when we’re not telling the whole truth, that becomes extremely hard to do. If we tell one version of the story to one former colleague and then a slightly different one to another that we’re maybe slightly closer to, those inconsistencies will eventually surface because… people talk.

And then we get into a state of paranoia, terrified that someone will find out the truth (or, at least, find out that we’re not sharing it, even if they still don’t know what it is). We imagine people are much more interested in our lives than they are and will be looking for reasons (when they might not have thought about it at all if we didn’t say anything). So we talk about it more. Bring it up preemptively, thinking we’re ‘controlling the narrative’. Try to get ahead of the rumors... Each time, adding another layer of complexity that digs more holes.

The Fix, Part 1: Stop Self-Sabotaging

The core of this issue is psychological more than circumstantial. I’ve never met anyone who says they don’t value authenticity on some level. Even those who pathologically lie value authenticity, which I didn’t know until I worked with two people who openly admitted to doing so and said the fabricated version of themselves was more authentic to how they saw themselves than reality. So, when we’re forced to live a lie by signing an NDA that prevents disclosure (or another reason that blocks us from telling the full truth), we’re placed in a state of cognitive dissonance that threatens our values and sense of identity. That is the crisis you’re managing in this situation, not the issue that led to your job change. The problem is specifically that we can’t be authentic in this moment about this particular issue, so we try to get out of the discomfort that that causes by creating a different narrative.

Accepting the discomfort, that cognitive dissonance, is the only way to stop sabotaging yourself. You can't be authentic about this thing, so you're fracturing yourself trying to be authentic about something else. I’m calling this self-sabotage because it is, regardless of how much you believe you’re protecting yourself when you do it. You might be thinking that it isn’t your fault that you’re in this situation and that you can’t do anything about it. Especially if, perhaps, you didn’t actually do the thing that resulted in you having to leave, or you did do it but believe it only happened because of something someone else did. I’ve worked with clients in both situations. Believing yourself to be a victim of the situation is the enemy of reputation-protecting responses. I’m calling it self-sabotage because it gives you agency to take responsibility for something—if you can identify one part of the situation you can control, you can more easily get the rest to fall into place and take responsibility for your communications instead of feeling backed into a corner. You can choose not to self-sabotage. If you can’t control anything else, you can control that.

It’s self-sabotaging because when you try to hint at the truth without explicitly violating the NDA or sharing something you can’t, not only do you create a narrative that invites questions, you may also make cryptic statements like mentioning ‘toxic workplaces’ or making passive-aggressive comments about ‘culture fit’, and these don’t come across well. Essentially, the ‘cover-up’ narratives create more reputational damage than the situation itself because they collectively make you come across as unprofessional or difficult to work with in ways that aren’t even related to your job change.

The solution to this is to notice when you’re self-sabotaging and ask yourself why you are doing it. It’s probably that you feel the need to be authentic and understood. OK… we all have that need. And you can meet it without overexplaining. Take one short piece of truth that you are going to share and stick with that (more on this in Part 2 below). Whenever you feel the need to add to it or explain, ask yourself if what you’re about to say is consistent with your single truth. If it’s not, don’t say it. For example, you might decide to say you left for personal reasons. This type of situation is personal… and it’s a reason. Decide that this is authentic to you and present it as your truth. Set a boundary with yourself that you won’t engage in further discussion about it beyond stating that personal reasons were involved.

You’re not required to make the story more detailed or emotional or comfortable for the other person, and most people who ask you things like “Why did you leave?” aren’t even looking for the full story. They won’t come away with a negative opinion about you if you share a super short explanation. Most will accept it and stop thinking about it entirely. They’re engaging in a social interaction; you’re seeing it as an interrogation because you know you’re hiding something. It’ll also make your relationships within your working network more difficult if you approach this with the assumption that they’re trying to ‘catch you out’. Most will just be interested in how you are and what you’re doing next.

To get to that single truth you’re going to use, you need to manage the internal psychological conflict. You not being able to tell the truth is reality, but it doesn’t reflect your integrity because you don’t have a choice in the matter. Signing an NDA is a business transaction. You’re not being inauthentic by not sharing the whole truth; you’re moderating your authenticity for the situation you’re in, which is a perfectly healthy way to practice authenticity. We talk about ‘being our whole selves’ in our professional lives as if that’s something we can do, but we can’t, even in less contentious situations. I’m sitting on the floor writing this right now because that’s where I like to sit and write. It would be authentic to me to do that in the middle of an office with other people in it, but it wouldn’t be the right choice... Showing up as our true selves is better approached as acting in a way that aligns with our overall values and goals, and if yours is to move forward and have a successful career after this setback, accepting that you can’t provide details and choosing a single true statement that you can stand behind is entirely authentic.

The Fix, Part 2: Change The Focus

The point of the single truth is narrative containment rather than control. We talk a lot about narrative control in crisis management, but control isn’t something you have in situations like this when another entity has decided for you what you can and can’t say. The desire to overexplain and invent cover stories stems from an attempt to control the narrative by providing details that fill the void left by the NDA (or other circumstances preventing you from telling the truth). That void is always going to be there unless circumstances change and you become able to talk about everything in detail (which is (a) unlikely and (b) a bad idea, but that’s a topic for another post). All you can do is accept it and work with what you can do. What we want to do here is contain the narrative: give people very little material to expand on.

Your one truth ideally gives people what they’re generally looking for when asking you why you left and what happened: a way to mentally categorize your situation so they can move the conversation forward. They want to know if it’s positive or negative so they know what to say to you and maybe how they can help you. Or they might have bad intentions and want to get information out of you so they can talk shit about you. Neither of those scenarios (and particularly the last one) necessitates a detailed response.

Your single truth should be:

• Short

• Neutral

• Consistent

Then, after you’ve shared it, immediately switch the topic to what you’re doing now to move the conversation forward. If you’re pressed for more details, you can directly say you can’t get into them and that you’re focused on what’s next, then shift back to talking about what you’re doing now.

This approach removes the cognitive burden of maintaining a lie as you’re no longer trying to remember which parts of the story you’ve told to which people. If your one truth is neutral and ‘boring’ enough, they’re unlikely to come back to it and press you. A short neutral truth is also not emotional. It protects your reputation because you’re not giving anyone anything interesting to speculate about. Rumors grow in environments where there’s a mix of partial information and emotional charge attached to the discussion. Without these, conversations readily move on to other topics.

Question: “I heard you left University X. What happened?”

Response: “I did! I left for personal reasons, and I’m focusing all my energy on my consulting work right now. It’s been a learning curve, but I’m really enjoying the challenge. What are you working on these days?”

‘Personal reasons’ is a great single truth because it’s hard for anyone to argue with it. It is a subjective truth that doesn’t require evidence and establishes a boundary that most people will recognize, especially in professional settings, as pressing someone for details about their personal life that they’re not offering themselves is widely considered inappropriate.

And whatever you do, if nobody is mentioning your previous position or asking you any questions about it, do not bring it up yourself. Just lead with what you’re doing now and what you want to do in the future. Nobody you meet at a conference is going to pull up your CV and quiz you on your previous position in the middle of a conversation. There is NO need to focus on the past if nobody else is even thinking about it.

Your career is defined by what you’re doing now and what you’ll do in the future, not how you left your last job. Protect your peace and reputation by focusing on what’s next.

Most of the online narrative I’ve seen surrounds how Chloe’s Giant Cookies can contest this and shut down the lawsuit. I’m interested in the other side and what YOU need to consider if you’re thinking about filing a trademark infringement lawsuit against an influencer-run brand.

You think the biggest risk to you is their use of your trademark. Your lawyer has probably told you you’ll win the case, they’ll have to change their name, you’ll get damages… and if it is IP infringement, you probably will. That’s what matters from your lawyer’s perspective. They’re there for the outcome of the case. You win, risk over, right?

Wrong.

Because while you’re in court, the case is also being tried in the court of public opinion. That influencer brand is making videos about it, painting you as the bad guy threatening their livelihood and all they’ve put into building their business…

You’re taking it away from them.

They’re the victim.

And they have a following. People jump on the online outrage and start coming after you as if you’ve done something wrong.

Defending your trademark isn’t wrong. There’s no point in having one if you’re not going to use it. That’s the objective reality. But reality doesn’t matter. Perception does. And when the brand you’re suing has the audience and influence to turn public perception against you, it doesn’t matter that you’re in the right. You won’t be perceived that way. Your lawyer might tell you to say nothing and let everything play out in court, as if the lawsuit itself and winning it will do all the work you need done. It just won’t. Because the cost of reputational damage from the other side completely controlling the narrative and building public perception against you does more damage to your brand than the original IP infringement did.

If you’re filing that lawsuit, YOU have to publicly and strategically tell your side too, to guide public perception toward reality rather than letting the other side have all of the narrative control. Get a crisis PR person to help if you don’t know how to do this. Lawyers are there for the case; PR helps protect your reputation during it so that the case doesn’t leave your brand in a worse position than it ever would have been if the trademark infringement had just been left alone.

Don’t underestimate how much taking a ‘right action’ can be turned against you in the court of public opinion.

If people like the influencer brand and buy into the victim narrative, they don’t care if you’re not actually in the wrong. And if you think they’re wrong for twisting things against you… that doesn’t stop the reality of them doing it. Knowing or saying that something shouldn’t be the way it is has never stopped it from being that way.

A legal victory won’t help you if you lose your reputation in the process, so get your comms figured out before filing anything.

The biggest mistake is to see a lawsuit as just a legal process. When you’re up against someone with a large social media following attached to their brand, filing a lawsuit against them creates a content opportunity for them. Social media runs on algorithms that respond to engagement. The influencer brand can take that lawsuit and rally their community around their defense regardless of whether that defense will actually stand up in court; it will get picked up by the algorithm because people are extremely responsive to situations that fuel outrage and appear to provide an opportunity to protect the victim of another company ‘bullying’ the creators they have parasocial relationships with (I’m saying that as objective fact, not with judgment).

The influencer’s followers feel like they know them, and they trust them, so when they post a tearful video about how some other company is trying to take away the name they worked so hard to build, that audience doesn’t care about the nuances of trademark law or the necessity of defending a trademark to avoid losing it. All they see and care about is that their favorite creator is being attacked. The influencer knows how to communicate with their audience and frame the lawsuit as an aggressive, unprovoked attack.

The law is on your side, but public opinion isn’t. And it’s public opinion, more than the outcome of the case, that will determine your brand’s future success. The victim narrative in situations like this is powerful because it connects emotionally with an audience. Once this chain of outrage is ‘activated’, it’s very difficult to stop it, even if you come in later with an extremely well-crafted response. The influencer’s followers may flood your pages and Google reviews with negative comments, call for boycotts, call out your brand partners and demand they stop working with you.

Your lawyer might tell you to say nothing.

Lawyers are trained to minimize legal risk, and from their perspective, it’s often safest to say nothing at all because anything you do say can (and will) be used in court. So they’ll want to let the legal process play out and avoid public statements. To a lawyer, ‘no comment’ is neutral and protective.

The court of public opinion sees ‘no comment’ as an indication that the other side is right. If you don’t tell your side, the other side will tell it for you, and ceding the narrative to them is letting them define the terms of the conflict. The reputational damage inflicted while you’re in ‘no comment’ mode leave public perception of your brand irreparably harmed, even if you win the lawsuit. Consumers may associate your brand with bullying, aggression, and unfairness even if you were not doing anything wrong.

The cost of this reputational damage can far exceed the cost of the original trademark infringement. Trademark infringement can cause consumer confusion and dilute the value of your trademark, and that is a real harm, but it doesn’t compare with a full-blown PR crisis that destroys consumer trust in ways that are difficult to quantify and hard to repair. Is it unfair, given that you are just trying to protect your own brand? Yes. But if we get caught up in the unfairness of situations, we get trapped in an emotional state that isn’t conducive to taking action. If an influencer’s audience decides to boycott your brand, you’ll lose sales immediately, and in the long term, you can lose the ability to maintain your position in the market.

Before filing, consider the lifetime value of a customer lost to a viral boycott versus the actual financial damage caused by the influencer’s infringing use of your mark.

If the reputational damage from filing is severe, you’re essentially paying to protect the name of a brand that people now actively dislike.

If you do decide to file, you MUST have a strategic communication plan in place beforehand and plan for the worst-case scenario in the court of public opinion, just as your lawyers plan for the worst-case scenario in the courtroom. You’re not going to get a good comms plan from your lawyer. Your lawyer’s job is to win the case. Your PR job is to win the public. Those aren’t the same thing, and pretending they are is how you end up legally vindicated and reputationally destroyed. If you don’t have experience in this area, hire a crisis PR who can help and knows how to communicate with your lawyer as well to align public statements and ensure they don’t compromise your legal position.

A good approach will anticipate the other side’s narrative, considering their audience and likely responses, and involve messaging that explains your position and counters the other side’s narrative without coming across as defensive or aggressive. You have to assume they’ll take the issue to social media and try to weaponize their audience against you. Your response should not get into a viral back-and-forth debate with them or engage with their audience or comments section. Sometimes we default to defensiveness in ways that make us look worse.

Defensive: We take our IP seriously and have every right to protect it. [Brand] is using a confusingly similar name that violates our trademark, and we are pursuing legal action to enforce our rights.

Strategic: We started [Brand] because we wanted to create something our customers could trust. Our name is part of that promise. When another company uses a similar name, it creates confusion about where the product comes from and what they’re getting. We’re taking this step because we care about making sure you know exactly what you’re buying, and that you’re not accidentally getting something that isn’t ours. Maintaining trust with our customers is a core value of [Brand].

A strategic comms approach here is calmly and clearly sharing your position publicly in a way that resonates with your audience’s values (recognizing that your audience and the influencer’s audience may be different but with substantially overlapping subsets; you need to understand both). Your framing needs to explain the why behind the action in a way that makes sense to someone who knows nothing about trademark law, which is most of us, and taps into some of that emotional connection that the other side will also use, essentially humanizing your brand before the other side dehumanizes it. Maybe you’re protecting your audience from being misled or making sure they know they’re getting a genuine product. Framing it as protecting them rather than going after the other person’s business is more likely to be well-received.

To craft your comms effectively, the one thing you need to let go of is the idea that being right is enough.

You can have the law entirely on your side and an airtight case for trademark infringement with all the evidence you need to prove the other side is using your IP, but if the public decides you’re the bad guy, none of that matters. Imagine losing not just individual customers, but your ability to partner with retailers, distributors, and collaborators. Those downstream effects are expensive.

If people like the influencer brand and buy into the victim narrative, they do not care if you are actually in the wrong. They will ignore the facts. They will dismiss the legal arguments as corporate double-speak. They will focus entirely on the emotional narrative that the influencer has constructed and see you as a powerful entity crushing a vulnerable one. As I said above, focusing on the unfairness of that won’t save your brand’s reputation, and focusing on the ‘rightness’ of your action won’t change public perception. The court of public opinion operates from emotion, not evidence, so your messaging needs to speak to your audience on a human level. It can help to create ‘personas’ from your audience’s characteristics and think as though you are speaking directly to that person in a 1-1 conversation when you’re crafting your messaging to make it feel more personal and human and less shouting into the void.

Sometimes, the smarter move is to let the trademark infringement go and focus on what actually builds your business, but where protecting it is essential and you need to file, you have to get your comms figured out first, especially when dealing with an entity that has easy influence over public opinion.

Don’t fight for the right to your name and make it a name that’s no longer worth having in the process.

Brand partnerships are exciting for TikTok creators for many reasons. And they’re not easy to get. It’s especially exciting when one of your favorite brands you’ve been buying from your whole life wants to partner with you. “IS THIS REAL LIFE?” the creator responded, indicating her excitement. She sent over her email address, expecting details on the partnership.

Instead, she got a takedown request.

We want to make you aware that <company> is the author and publisher of its sales catalogues, which contain copyright protected photographs, images, and product descriptions, as well as the copyright owner of our product images online. We own exclusive rights under United States and Canadian copyright law in and to the images and descriptions contained in our sales catalogues and our product photos. Without authorization, your TikTok account reproduces and displays exact copies of <company’s> sales catalogue materials - for example, <products>. This is copyright infringement. We’d like to avoid having our legal team have to get involved, but that will require you to remove these posts and immediately stop posting reproductions of our catalogue or our photographs.

The creator posted the DM and email exchange on TikTok, explaining why she removed the posts. Naturally, that video went viral. The brand sent her another email:

We saw your video and want to apologize. We should have approached our outreach differently.

Our intent was to protect our intellectual property, but we recognize that our DM was misleading and caused frustration. When unreleased or copyrighted assets are shared, it’s important for us to act quickly - but we should have handled the situation better.

We value the <sport> creator community and appreciate the role you play in it. If you’re interested, we’d love to have you test our new <product> when it launches this spring. Again, we apologize, and we hope to have the opportunity to collaborate in the future.

Again, the video went viral. The brand turned off tagging on their posts and started deleting negative comments calling them out.

Today, two weeks later, the brand posted a text response video:

Last week, we made a big mistake.

We contacted <TikTok creator> saying we were interested in a partnership, when our real intent was to ask for a post featuring unreleased product information to be taken down.

In our rush to address the post, we made a bad call and misled a genuine supporter. That was wrong and we apologized, but we recognize it wasn’t enough.

To <creator>: How we handled this wasn’t fair to you. You’re a passionate hockey player and were a loyal supporter of our brand. We damaged your trust, and we’re truly sorry for that.

To the <sport> community: We care deeply about this community and the creators who help grow the game. We got this wrong, and we’re committed to doing better.

We are real people who love <sport>, and we made a real mistake.

This is an excellent example of how NOT to handle an issue

A company handling things badly is a great opportunity to practice your skills in doing it better. It’s more helpful to look at mistakes than successes because how one person achieved something teaches you how one person achieved something in their unique set of circumstances. You can’t copy/paste their approach onto your life because every issue is unique, and the differing factors involved mean that an effective approach for one individual or company will almost never directly transfer to another. Looking at mistakes helps you learn to strategize by identifying what you’d do differently and considering the circumstances without bias from knowing what works. That’s why I like to look at mistakes.

And this was not a single mistake.

What went wrong

Like most crises and issues, this was a sequence of events and choices, each presenting a chance to de-escalate or escalate the situation. This brand consistently chose the latter.

The takedown request itself… that might be valid. I’m not going to deep dive copyright law here. But the brand’s bait-and-switch approach was extremely flawed, and there was almost no way it could succeed with its reputation intact. I have difficulty envisioning a PR team making this decision, so I suspect one wasn’t involved. Telling a loyal supporter of your brand that you want to partner with them to obtain their email address for a takedown notice is insane. That’s the only appropriate word. Talk about weaponizing the creator’s loyalty and excitement against her.

The takedown email was excessively aggressive and intimidating. The mention of the company’s legal team is a thinly veiled threat. The private email apology wasn’t much better. Obviously, the brand wanted to resolve the issue in private after the situation was made public, but it’s too late to make only a private apology when your brand is publicly under fire for shitty actions on TikTok. Saying nothing publicly while reacting privately, deleting negative comments, and disabling tagging on the company’s social media makes it clear that the private apology was tactical rather than genuine. The offer to test the new product and the vague “we hope to have the opportunity to collaborate in the future” read as a token gesture, with no acknowledgment of the breach of trust or lack of accountability. Test it, but without a collaboration now? They couldn’t possibly have expected her to review these products for free, could they?

TL;DR: The brand tried to privately resolve the situation without taking public accountability.

A genuine public apology at this stage, alongside a genuine brand partnership offer, could have begun to repair the reputational damage.

The actual public apology came too late

Two weeks after the initial incident is like two years in social media time. Responding late puts your response entirely in the ‘reactive’ category, made under pressure from criticism rather than a genuine desire to issue it. Doing this lets the public control the narrative and makes your apology feel forced and insincere.

This apology was also badly phrased. I like the part where the company clearly states that they did do the bait-and-switch on this creator and that this was wrong. I don’t like the shifting of blame to having to ‘rush’ and that resulting in a ‘bad call’. Lying and then hinting at legal action is more than a bad call. And a copyright violation involving a creator posting your catalog and effectively advertising your new products for you, for free, is not enough of an emergency to justify rushing to the point where you can’t develop and implement a respectful approach. This creator’s video wasn’t hurting the brand.

I don’t like the lack of empathy regarding the creator’s feelings about being offered a fake partnership. I don’t like the empty promise of “we’re committed to doing better”. How? How are you committed to doing better? Policy changes? Training? What are you doing to make sure that you do better, and what does doing better look like to you?

Written apologies are just words. The right words can go a long way toward rebuilding trust and reputation, but they must be accompanied by actions that align with those words and promises and can be kept. The brand’s apology offers no concrete measure for customers to assess whether its future actions align with its promises.

There’s also a substantial power imbalance in this situation, with a large company on one side and a small creator on the other. The deceptive tactics and legal threats could be considered an abuse of this power. Brand reputation is built on trust, and when a brand is perceived as abusing its power, it will attract public attention in ways it doesn’t want. Other loyal brand users will likely see themselves in the creator and feel alienated by the brand, and may not want to support a company they perceive as bullying its consumers.

Considerations for your brand

Everything this brand got wrong is avoidable. The negative impact of each choice made in this process could have been predicted before any action was taken. Bad for them, but good for you, because you won’t make the same errors for your own brand.

Ask nicely first

What this brand should have done is sent a direct message to the creator explaining that the product images she’d posted were copyrighted or unreleased/not ready to be shown in public yet, and asked her respectfully to take them down, perhaps offering to send her some free gear as a show of support:

Hey, we love your passion for our brand! We noticed you posted some unreleased product info. That stuff is still under wraps, so we’d be grateful if you could take it down. As a thank you for your support and understanding, we’d love to send you some gear.

A friendly message requesting removal alone (without the free stuff) would also likely have resulted in a positive outcome. The creator indicated that she’d have taken the posts down if asked in this manner.

If someone posts a copyrighted image of yours, try just asking them to remove it. No threatening legal action or other intimidating language. You can escalate if they refuse, but there’s no need to start aggressive. Most will be happy to act on a respectful request.

And definitely do not tell them you want to partner with them to start a conversation unless your goal is to initiate a real brand partnership.

Respond quickly

If for some reason your brand goes viral for a negative reason, respond quickly. Within an hour, if possible. If you don’t have all the details, a holding statement indicating that you’re aware of the situation, are investigating, take it seriously, and will provide a detailed response soon is better than nothing. It shows you care and are doing something about it. Once you’re ready to release the full response, make sure it doesn’t just name your actions but also shows empathy and acknowledges the impact of those actions on everyone affected. Make your next steps concrete and clear, so you have promised something that, over time, your customers or clients can see you’re acting in alignment with. Give them a reason to trust you again.

Don’t make a big issue out of a small problem

The copyright infringement was a minor and easily solvable problem. The brand’s decision to use deception and intimidation, followed by a delayed acknowledgement, built their reputational crisis brick-by-brick, as they say on TikTok. Each step was a conscious choice that demonstrated disrespect for the creator and the wider community.

This brand appears to have misidentified their crisis after the mistake that caused it, repeatedly referring to the copyright issue and protecting their IP in subsequent messaging when their audience doesn’t care about the copyright. Their audience cares about how the brand treated the creator. The crisis here is poor management decisions leading to deceptive practices, and it’s that that needs to be addressed by the brand moving forward if they want to repair their reputation. They could easily have had that content taken down with a private, respectful request. They weren’t being actively harmed by the creator’s content, and it wasn’t an emergency situation that necessitated strong action. The existence of that content was a minor problem that the brand created a substantial issue out of.

Always step back and look at the bigger picture when you feel something is an emergency that justifies a rushed, potentially catastrophic (reputation-wise) response.

There are very few true emergencies in business. Take your time to get it right.

This brand lost control of the narrative and reinforced the negative stereotype that large corporations are manipulative. Rebuilding trust will be challenging and require sustained, verifiable commitment to transparency and authenticity. The community will be watching. And this was so, so avoidable…

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In a conversation about this the other day, an acquaintance said that I can’t possibly be thinking of asking people if I could use their driveway. “It’s such an inconvenience!”. Is it, though? It will take 24 hours at most to have the POD delivered, emptied, and remaining contents transferred to the shipper. I had that POD outside my own house for a month, twice, and it was never in the way. “But it’s your fault you don’t have anywhere to unload it. You should have planned better! Figure it out yourself like everyone else does.”

That’s all true. It is entirely my fault that my stuff is in Indiana and I am in England. I chose to leave it there knowing I’d have to go back for it at some point. It is entirely my responsibility to figure out how to get it back.

But I don’t think that a problem being someone’s fault and responsibility means that it’s automatically unreasonable to ask another person to assist in solving it.

My acquaintance’s attitude represents the type moral judgment I see a lot on social media and in society in general at the moment. When a person expresses a need for something, the reaction isn’t often just “I can’t help”, but “You’re wrong to even ask.” It’s like we’re becoming allergic to inconvenience and seeing needing something as a personal failure.

Independence is great. I am an independent person and rarely need anything from anyone. What independence isn’t is complete self-containment at all costs. If you have the idea that the ideal person in our current society is one who needs nothing, asks for nothing, and never creates even the slightest friction for anyone else, when someone does need something from you, you’re already primed to think “Why are you putting this on me?”, regardless of what helping would actually involve. It’s the request that becomes the issue, not the substance of it. I saw a video on TikTok a while ago, someone ranting about their friend asking for a lift to the airport and framing it as this massive inconvenience and ridiculous ask as if we haven’t been driving each other to airports for decades. It was their fault they didn’t have transport, after all. Logistical problems get mixed up with moral failings and a simple request for a reasonable favor becomes an analysis of whose fault it is that the favor is needed.

People call this ‘boundaries’. An important concept for personal well-being that, in some cases, has lost all meaning. Many people are twisting this idea of protecting their limits into justification for complete non-involvement in other peoples’ challenges. Requests for help become ‘emotional labor’; dependency, no matter how situational or temporary, becomes ‘toxic’. As if everything is perfectly controllable and deviations from plans are evidence of personal failing.

Everyone knows that life is unpredictable and always has been. Community is so valuable because we can’t predict everything or plan our way out of everything. There’s a massive difference between taking responsibility for things not going to plan or doing something wrong and being essentially abandoned to manage the consequences alone. Older social norms, at least ones that I remember, had a more nuanced perspective, that “Yes, this is your problem to solve, and we will help you solve it”. Not “If it’s your problem, you must handle it entirely by yourself”.

It’s the attitude that’s the issue, not even necessarily the not helping aspect. Saying ‘no’ to a request that you don’t want to or can’t accommodate is fine. I’m not suggesting that we should all become people-pleasers and do whatever anyone asks of us for the sake of community. What I see the problem as is the reframing of the act of requesting help itself as unreasonable and the blame culture around asking. Almost like it’s a social pathology and it’s ‘safer’ to need nothing than risk being met with an overblown sense of resentment.

This doesn’t just show up in interpersonal relationships. Look at how society in general has gradually moved away from community help as a means of survival toward quite extreme individualism. There’s this sense that you’re smart and disciplined and responsible enough, you become immune to the unpredictability of the world and shouldn’t need anything; therefore, if you do, you’re not smart or disciplined or responsible enough, and that’s your fault, so you’re on your own. You did something wrong. You failed to plan. You failed to save. You failed to anticipate.

It’s a comfortable psychological perspective for those who are currently secure. To look at those who aren’t and feel a sense of safety from not being them. “That could never be me,” they think, “because I am more careful.”

Like most things with negative effects that are disguised as self-protection, it’s rooted in fear. It’s not comfortable to think that maybe you might not be as independent as you think you are. That your plans could fall apart and leave you needing something from someone else. It’s much easier to blame that person than it is to confront the fact that it could be you. Because that’s scary. It’s convenient to avoid scary.

Not quite so convenient when it’s you who needs something.

I’ve seen some people on the socials talk about this issue as one of closeness. That they don’t mind doing things for people, but only if they’re close friends. If it’s someone they don’t know well, being asked for a favor is awkward, makes them pull back from the interaction, and question the individual’s motives. It’s an interesting contrast to the Ben Franklin effect, which a former boss told me about over a decade ago: that when a person does a favor for someone, they tend to like that person more afterward, even if they did not like them much before.

I’ve always found that effect to be real.

So by resisting helping people we don’t know (or like!) because ‘we’re not close enough’ to them… are we actually reducing our chances of becoming closer to more people? It’s entirely possible that the increasing resistance to getting to know people and letting them know us (another thing I’ve observed recently that I won’t get into in great detail here) is tied in with this association of needing help with moral failure.

Having fewer people in our lives and doing fewer things for fewer people, a move away from community and connection, and distorting the concept of responsibility might feel safe and provide some kind of sense of moral superiority, but it’s not sustainable.

Why?

Humans are incentive-driven. Look at how apologies are handled. When a public figure or corporation makes a mistake, it’s generally accepted that if they take responsibility, show empathy, acknowledge the impact, and offer a sincere apology, that will help their reputation. They can learn from the experience and become better as a result. But some reactions are not positive, regardless of how well the apology is constructed. Taking accountability is met with “OK, so you did it, now we’re going to continue to talk about what you did”, followed by continued social ostracism. That type response comes from people who don’t seek accountability or change but continued criticism and exclusion. If that becomes the norm, there’s no incentive for taking responsibility. If taking responsibility and apologizing doesn’t open a path back into better standing, who would do it? It becomes a strategically pointless act of self-criticism.

These types of attitudes help create a culture where it seems almost functionally better to deny, deflect, and fight than it is to admit fault (even though it is NOT better to do this), because being at fault is painted as the primary issue. For accountability to be a functional social mechanism, it must include a pathway for the person to repair the harm and reintegrate, and people almost always need help in doing this. If we then also continue to criticize people who don’t take responsibility, don’t respond well to denials and deflections either, and use fault as a reason to withhold help, there’s no way to ‘win’ if you’re not perfect. And nobody is.

If we continue to meet accountability with continued derision and believe that any circumstance in which the person in it is at fault for being in it means they must handle the consequences alone, we make it less likely that people will take accountability and ask for help. Which makes it seem even more of an unreasonable thing when people do ask for help… It’s a vicious cycle.

I blame technology, somewhat, as it has made our isolation more palatable. We’re more connected digitally than we ever have been, but these close emotional connections are often physically distant. I have several genuine online friendships that play a huge and meaningful part in my life. I wouldn’t want to change them. But these relationships a complement to, not a substitute for, community in our actual local area, and that community is shrinking. Remote work, on-demand delivery, online shopping, streaming services, Uber etc. have made it so easy for us to meet our material needs without any meaningful interaction with others. We could do almost everything entirely alone within the confines of our own homes if we wanted. It makes self-sufficiency feel easy. It makes us forget that our well-being is tied to that of those around us. We forget how to ask for help, and we forget how to give it.

You can’t retreat from community and then wonder where it went.

Advocating for personal insulation above collective resilience creates a dangerously fragile society where one bad event can leave a person stranded by social judgment that insists they deserve it.

“No one owes you anything.”

“Life isn’t fair.”

“Deal with it.”

I don’t think this issue is as broadly prevalent as social media makes it seem, but it’s important to consider the reality of its effects. Compassion doesn’t go viral on social, whereas dismissiveness does. Over time, that public performance can seep into your private identity.

Needing help isn’t a form of failure. Helping is an opportunity to strengthen our social fabric. Again, I don’t mean abandoning boundaries or saying yes to every request. But negotiate limits with grace and kindness and make an effort to distinguish between those who want to take advantage of you and those who simply need a quick favor.

Sometimes we DO need to choose to inconvenience ourselves, in small and manageable ways, for the benefit of others, with the understanding that we, too, will one day need the same.

Think about this next time your knee-jerk reaction is ‘no’ to someone who asks you for a favor, whether its their fault that they need it or not.

I should probably end this now. I have a few emails to send about a driveway for my storage POD…

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A layoff is a crisis, and should be managed as one.

If you have to do a mass layoff, the first thing to keep in mind is that the people you are laying off are still your stakeholders. Nobody wants to do layoffs. They’re never great for reputation in the first place. What’s even worse is someone posting a video of a badly handled layoff meeting to social media, using you as example of what NOT to do.

While the financial and operational aspects are (usually) meticulously planned, the communication strategy is often an afterthought. And obviously so.

This. Is. A. Mistake.

The way your company communicates during a crisis is a defining test of your leadership and values. And of your long-term viability. Every employee will remember it, whether they’re laid off or a ‘survivor’. If it makes the news for the wrong reasons, even people who have never worked for you will remember it. Like your customers…

There are significant risks associated with getting the communications aspect wrong. Even if you do absolutely everything else right, poor communications has the power to leave everyone thinking that you did nothing right at all.

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When poor communication becomes the crisis

Layoff communications might be internal by nature, but they don’t necessarily stay that way. Scroll through ‘Layoff TikTok’ and you’ll find a substantial collection of layoff stories and reactions to layoff meetings, sometimes with a recording of the actual meeting itself. Not everyone names their former employer. That doesn’t mean that employer isn’t identifiable.

Some of these can go viral fast and get picked up by news outlets, such Brittany Pietsch’s TikTok video about being fired by former employer Cloudfare, which resulted in the company releasing this response (also not the best…).

Better.com laid off 900 employees via Zoom in a response to market changes. Perhaps the layoff was justified, but the communications were not, and the company became a symbol of callous leadership, leading to widespread criticism and executive resignations.

It might feel like the layoffs are something you couldn’t avoid, especially if it’s the result of what you perceive to be a non-oppositional crisis (you’re the victim of circumstances and are not responsible for needing to do it). But it is absolutely a choice to handle your communications badly. And it’s possible that your employees don’t see it as a no-fault situation at all. I can’t get into specific details, but I can think of at least one example where an external event brought a company’s business to a near-standstill, and while the official narrative was “we couldn’t have planned for this”, the behind-the-scenes chats told a different story. Employees at multiple levels of the organization shared that they had been warning about the likelihood of this specific event for years, yet nothing had been done to mitigate the effects in advance.

You don’t want this to be you.

This type of event can cause lasting damage to your company’s reputation both internally and externally. The last thing you need is for your communications about the layoff to become another crisis (or a focal point of the existing one… you have enough work to do already). The consequences extend far beyond a few negative headlines and breakroom rants. Will people want to work for you in the future? Will your remaining employees want to stay? What about your customers?

Candidates are watching. Employees are listening. And former team members are talking. Assume everyone knows everyone and that if you leave them with a negative experience and lack of trust, they likely won’t keep that to themselves.

The peak–end psychological principle is particularly relevant here, whereby people judge an experience according to how they felt at its most intense point (i.e., the peak) and at its end, rather than considering the entire experience as a whole. A layoff could be both the peak (most emotionally intense) and the end of an employee’s experience, totally overshadowing everything else. How the offboarding process is handled can irrevocably damage their entire perception of your organization, regardless of the positive experiences they’ve had during their employment. This final judgment is what they take to Glassdoor and their professional network… including potential future hires.

The damage is not confined to those who are left without a job. Seventy-one percent of layoff survivors report decreased motivation at work. Watching your colleagues treated badly during a layoff creates distrust and the fear of being next.

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Communicating with departing employees

The single most critical moment in a layoff is the notification conversation. Your company’s values must be put into practice here. If one of your core values is vulnerability, a layoff that doesn’t show any is a bad move. This is the conversation that will form your employees’ lasting impression. It’s a mistake to try to soften the blow as that can come across as flippant. The news is inherently difficult. So deliver it openly and with respect and clarity. Show genuine compassion. This requires intention.

There are several things to consider before you do it so that your narrative is consistent across all areas. A lack of consistency in messaging is where everything can fall apart VERY quickly. You are likely going to make a broad company-wide announcement (AFTER notifying affected employees, please…), and everything said to individual employees must be consistent with what is in that announcement. You need to make a coordinated effort across all departments to present a unified message. Keeping the details within a small executive circle and having managers and HR act with pieces of information instead of the full picture risks having one of them say something that is inconsistent with your actual plan. Consistency in the narrative is absolutely critical. If it seems like I keep repeating that here, it’s because I want you to remember it. Inconsistency creates speculation and confusion and chaos.

Another thing you need to look at is what your company website’s careers page currently looks like. If you have open positions up there and your laid-off employees are not going to have the opportunity to apply for or move to one of those, you must have a clear narrative prepared on why that is. If there are no open positions but they’re still hanging around on your website’s ‘careers’ page, remove them before delivering any layoff messages. “We need to significantly reduce the workforce but we have all these open positions and no you can’t have one” isn’t a good look. I worked at a company that kept recruitment open for roles that were eliminated and there was quite an elaborate group chat among former and current employees about it… it might even have ended up on Glassdoor or similar, IIRC. I don’t know if anyone was hired from those job ads, but people were talking about it, very critically. You want to avoid that.

Also, you might have to immediately cut off building and system access to those you’re laying off because of security concerns. Whatever you do, don’t do that before talking with them. I’ve seen people get locked out of systems a few days prior to layoffs, with the company describing it as a ‘technical issue that they were working to resolve’. It had been known for a while that the company was in trouble, so people were speculating behind the scenes as soon as the ‘technical issues’ started. If you have to do it, do it respectfully and after communicating properly. Definitely don’t lie about why your employees can’t access their work. Definitely DO NOT revoke building access and have your employees being locked out as their first indicator that they no longer have a job. (Most people likely aren’t going to steal anything from your workplace… those who would probably already have.)

Who delivers the message?

The ideal messenger is the employee’s direct manager, in an individual meeting with each affected employee, accompanied by an HR representative who is there to help (but isn’t the one delivering the message while the manager just sits there listening). The manager has the established relationship and context. HR can ensure consistency in messaging and accurately answer questions about benefits, severance, logistics. Senior leadership is too removed for this personal conversation. The CEO should be responsible for the company-wide announcement, released at an appropriate time (after the affected individuals have been notified).

These individual meetings should be in person or on a live video call if your company has a remote workforce. A phone call or email is too impersonal. A mass Zoom call is the worst option. The meeting should be private, short, and dedicated solely to the purpose, not sprung on the person during their regular check-in meeting.

Of course, this approach requires telling your employees’ managers that their direct reports are being laid off. Surprisingly, doesn’t always happen. I’ve encountered several situations where a manager had absolutely no idea that half their team was being laid off. You don’t want managers saying “I hadn’t heard anything about this” to their recently terminated team members… it makes the company look disorganized and shows a complete lack of transparency and care for those affected.

It’s important to keep in mind that delivering bad news is deeply uncomfortable, and your leaders and managers may be tempted to rush it, hide from it, or use impersonal methods to avoid the emotional strain of a face-to-face conversation. Another mistake. Talk to your managers first to make sure that they are equipped for the task, and if they can’t do it well, train them. It’s not their fault - most people aren’t naturally able to deliver bad news effectively. Don’t throw this at them and expect them to be able to just do it or criticize them for needing training.

What should be in the message?

There’s no room for corporate bullshit in a difficult conversation like this, or using vague ambiguity trying to make the situation sound better than it is. You need to be direct and honest and show compassion. Use a script if it helps, but don’t read off it. I’ve seen several videos of layoff calls where someone is reading an impersonal script off a piece of paper, not even trying to use a compassionate tone, and essentially coming across as though the meeting is solely a legalistic requirement. It might be, but that’s not the impression laid-off employees should be taking away. There’s no authenticiy or empathy in reading off a script.

So, what should you do?

• Get to the point. Quickly. Don’t bury the lede in small talk and pretend you’re there for any other reason. Immediately state that you have difficult news to share and then share the news.

• Be transparent. Explain the business reasons behind the layoff. As I said above, this must be consistent with the broader announcement the company makes, and it should be a concise explanation of the strategic decision, not focused on why this specific employee was chosen. Do not call it performance-related if it isn’t. A role elimination isn’t a termination. Bringing up performance evaluations to someone who has not received guidance on improving their performance will leave them thinking, “This company terminated me for performance without giving me a chance to improve.” Not what you want. (Have a look at what happened with Meta)

  Legal might not want you providing detailed rationales or expressions of empathy for fear of litigation, but when it comes to communications and shaping the narrative that you want your former employees to take with them, you need transparency and humanity. Collaborate with your HR and legal teams to find a balance in your communications that shows respect and honesty without risk. Steven Fink wrote in Crisis Communications: The Definitive Guide to Managing the Message that “if people want to sue you, you will be sued. Expressing regret… is not going to get you sued, nor is not saying anything going to prevent litigation.” So tell the truth and show empathy.

• Acknowledge their contributions. Genuinely. Thank them for their work, and use specifics. Tell them how they have contributed and that you appreciate them. Make it known that you do value them. Many times, when being laid off, the primary sentiment among those affected will be that they are not valued. You might not be able to change that perception entirely with your words, but saying nothing guarantees it won’t change at all.

• Provide transition support. And communicate it clearly. A good severance package, benefits continuation, outplacement services (resume writing assistance, interview coaching, and job placement support)… If you’re creating a narrative of support, these back that up with action (you can’t fully manage a crisis with words; action that proves the intent behind them is needed). Provide a comprehensive packet with all this information. In writing, because your employees may not absorb all the details while still processing the news.

• Listen! This is the most important aspect. Allow your employees to react. Answer their questions honestly. Direct them to HR if you can’t. Show empathy. Not saying “I know how you feel,” but listening, giving them space to share their feedback, and treating them with genuine human decency.

Communicating with ‘layoff survivors’

This should be a separate conversation from your communications with those being laid off.

You cannot effectively address two stakeholder groups with different objectives in a single message.

It is impossible to be empathetic and considerate toward those you’re laying off while simultaneously reassuring layoff ‘survivors’ that their position is safe and the company is going to survive.

Communications to the remaining employees should go out after the notifications to departing employees. You don’t want ‘survivors’ telling those you’re laying off that layoffs are happening before you’ve told them they’re being laid off. That’s giving away narrative control and letting speculation fill an information vacuum, and it creates more anxiety and chaos within an already-challenging situation.

Your messaging to remaining employees is just as critical, if not more so, than that to those who are being laid off. Those who remain aren’t necessarily going to just be happy and feel lucky that they still have a job. Half of them will likely be going straight to job sites because of concerns regarding their job security and whether more layoffs are coming… or apprehension about taking on the responsibilities of those who have been let go (hello, stress and burnout!). They might feel guilty for keeping their jobs. They might feel angry with leadership for the decision and have lost trust in your management.

You need to effectively address these things. They are your stakeholders’ needs, and they are your responsibility.

Failing to do so will lead to a disastrous drop in morale and productivity. People will leave. Your best people might leave.

The communication strategy for remaining employees must be designed to rebuild trust and psychological safety if you want to keep them engaged in the company’s future as well as their own.

How to deliver the message

Immediately following the individual notifications, the remaining employees should be notified. Managers should have 1-1 meetings with their remaining team members, and the CEO should lead an all-hands meeting with the entire remaining staff. DO NOT bring those who are being laid off into this meeting.

This is an opportunity for leadership to be visible, transparent, and accountable. The tone should be respectful of the difficult nature of what has happened. It should not be celebratory. It definitely should not be overly optimistic. (“There’s nothing to worry about, the company is fine!!” OK, why am I the only person left on my team, then…?). It shouldn’t make promises that can’t or won’t be kept.

In your messaging:

• Acknowledge the challenge. Clearly. Acknowledge the emotional weight of the decision for everyone, especially those who are still there. Don’t overly focus on how hard it is for you (leadership) and how bad you feel. Trust me, your employees don’t care at this point. Focus on how it affects them.

• Be transparent. The CEO must clearly and transparently explain the business reasons behind the layoff. This should be the same rationale shared in individual meetings, company-wide announcements, and public statements. Consistency is key. Your remaining employees WILL talk with their laid-off colleagues. Don’t create a conflicting narrative.

• Clearly state that the layoffs are over. (If that is true). One of the biggest sources of anxiety for ‘survivors’ is the fear of future cuts. So you should state unequivocally that the layoff is complete. If that’s not guaranteed, be honest about the ongoing evaluation and provide as much clarity as possible about what’s next.

• Shift focus to what’s next. You must shift from the past to the future. Explain how the company is now structured to succeed. Detail any changes in strategy, team structures, and individual roles. People need to know where they stand and how their roles have changed. They need to know that you have plans to move forward with intention. You need to rebuild their confidence in the company’s direction. That’s a long-term project, but this is a start.

• Address the workload. Acknowledge that the remaining employees will have questions about their new responsibilities. Commit to a thoughtful and fair redistribution of work, and engage employees in that process. Simply dumping the work of departed colleagues onto survivors is a recipe for disaster. A person suddenly given the workload of three other people with no incentive will likely immediately look for alternative employment. Don’t minimize the effect this layoff will have on workload if it is going to dramatically increase the contributions of the remaining employees. I’ve worked for a company that increased workload by almost 50% and tried to gaslight us into believing it was the same amount of work because ‘it would still be completed in the same amount of time’. (That ended up in multiple Glassdoor reviews… not posted by me, I must add.)

• Hold an open and honest Q&A session. You must be prepared to answer tough questions without defensiveness. Emphasis on that last part, there. An open Q&A demonstrates transparency and a willingness to listen to employee concerns, helping to rebuild trust. It is better to face the difficult questions head-on than to let rumors and misinformation fill the void. Remember, no defensiveness. If your CEO can’t do this without getting defensive, find someone else who can. It’s better to delegate than to make everything worse with bad comms.

You can turn a moment of crisis into a foundation for future resilience among your remaining employees, but only with good communication and follow-up action that aligns with what you said you were going to do.

After the conversations

The all-hands meeting is just the beginning of the conversation. Continuous communication and support will be essential for rebuilding trust. Make sure your managers have the resources and training to have ongoing conversations with their teams. They are on the front lines of managing ‘survivor’ morale and need to be able to answer questions accurately and escalate concerns when they don’t personally have the answers. So they need to know what is going on and who has the information that their direct reports might need. You don’t want a situation where managers are saying they don’t know what is going on or who to direct people to. That won’t rebuild trust at all.

Why all this matters

How your company treats employees during a layoff reveals how real your values actually are. As I said at the beginning, a layoff is a crisis, and the way you communicate through a crisis defines your reputation long after the situation itself has passed.

Get it wrong, and you risk far more than a few bad headlines. You lose trust. You lose credibility. You lose people. Not just those you lay off, but the ones you hoped would stay.

Years from now, very few people will remember the market conditions or financial pressures that led to your layoffs. They will remember the meeting. They will remember the tone. They will remember whether they were treated like a cost to be eliminated or a person worthy of respect.

That memory, not your press release, is your legacy.

There are several companies I have never worked for that I would avoid because of what their handling of layoffs has shown me about how they operate under pressure. News travels fast in small fields…

Whether that story works for you or against you is a choice you make.

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What Makary said:

“The FDA is open to Bayesian statistics. We are putting out new guidance to encourage the use of Bayesian statistics in clinical trial design and the readout of results. Now, if you’re not familiar with Bayesian statistics, it is a leap forward beyond the frequentist model of analyzing data. And it has many potential uses. For example, it can help in clinical trial design, it can help identify the optimal dose of a drug, and it can be used to extrapolate to pediatric populations, which, as you know, are often a forgotten population when drugs are developed. And, for example, if you have a small clinical Phase II trial, that data can be informative to the Bayesian analysis of a Phase III clinical trial. So it is a very big step in the statistical mathematical community. We want companies and sponsors to benefit from the power of Bayesian statistics. So it’s an exciting day, and more to come.” - Dr. Marty Makary, FDA Commissioner

At first glance, this sounds like a major scientific breakthrough. Or, at the very least, a dramatic regulatory shift.

Makary described Bayesian statistics as a “leap forward” and a “very big step,” framing the announcement as an effort help companies design better trials, optimize dosing, include pediatric populations, and move drugs through development more efficiently.

But Bayesian statistics isn’t a new approach. And it was already allowed. Bayesian methods have appeared in drug development for years.The FDA first released guidance on the use of Bayesian statistics in medical device trials in 2010.

What is this announcement really doing? Who is it for? What are the risks beneath the optimism?

Although the video was posted publicly, the language makes clear that it wasn’t written for the public. It was written for biostatisticians, regulatory affairs teams, pharmaceutical executives, academic trial designers…

Terms like Bayesian statistics, frequentist models, Phase II and Phase III trials, and extrapolation to pediatric populations are generally meaningful only to people already knowledgeable about drug development. For everyone else, the message is opaque, technical, and… boring.

Intentionally so.

The FDA often communicates this way on methodological issues, talking over rather than to the public. Partly because the public can’t directly act on them. But there’s another strategic advantage, in that dense, jargon-heavy messaging substantially reduces the risk of political soundbites, social media outrage cycles, and journalistic oversimplification. Plain-language explanations invite controversy; the messaging used here discourages it, and it’s paired with hype (“leap forward”, “a very big step”, “exciting day”) and moral framing (this will help children) that will leave non-experts thinking “I don’t know what any of this means, but it sounds great!”.

What the FDA is (and isn’t) announcing

“The FDA is open to Bayesian statistics. We are putting out new guidance to encourage the use of Bayesian statistics in clinical trial design and the readout of results.”

What’s new here is not the methods but the direct encouragement to use these methods and detailed guidance for doing so.

Guidance matters because it tells investigators how to use a method in a way that regulators are likely to accept, reducing regulatory risk. It says, “You can bring us Bayesian designs, and we won’t treat them as suspicious.” That type of change and messaging is often sufficient to change industry behavior.

“Now, if you’re not familiar with Bayesian statistics, it is a leap forward beyond the frequentist model of analyzing data.”

In simple terms, the frequentist model assumes you start from zero and asks

The Bayesian approach starts from the fact that we already know some things and instead asks:

The frequentist method tries to avoid assumptions by focusing on how strange the data looks under a no-effect scenario.

The Bayesian approach openly combines prior knowledge with new evidence to estimate what is most likely true now.

It’s the difference between judging a movie by one review versus looking at that review alongside the trailer, the director’s past work, and what other people are saying, then updating your opinion as more reviews come in. While the Bayesian approach does align better with how scientists think, recognizing that knowledge accumulates and doesn’t ‘reset’ at every stage of investigation, the flexibility the approach introduces is also where the risks increase.

The hidden risks

Bayesian methods can incorporate bias because the analyses depend on assumptions that are made before the new data are collected.

These assumptions are called priors. Priors can be overly optimistic (especially if based on weak Phase II data). They can also be selected in ways that subtly favor success. Two teams can analyze the same data and reach different conclusions depending on priors. So, the flexibility of the Bayesian approach can make results look stronger without anyone falsifying data. Bad actors don’t have to cheat, just frame.

Priors can also be misleading. If you’re using data from past trials, real-world evidence, and related drugs but it’s outdated and doesn’t consider new standards of care, different populations, and updated disease definitions… poorly matched, biased, and outdated data can contaminate new conclusions, and it might not be obvious that it’s happening.

Bayesian models also tend to be complex, incorporating hierarchical structures, simulations, and sensitivity analyses that many clinicians and reviewers (and certainly the public) cannot independently interrogate. This creates a subtle trust-the-model problem, where we’re looking at outputs and being expected to trust what a model is giving us without really understanding why it’s giving that output or how it got there.

Trial design

Makary lists several applications of Bayesian statistics, each with benefits and tradeoffs.

it can help in clinical trial design

Bayesian statistics can make it possible to design trials that are smaller and adaptive. You can adjust mid-trial according to accumulating evidence, potentially making trials cheaper, shorter, and potentially less risky as patients may be less likely to be exposed to ineffective doses.

But adaptive trials can blur the line between testing a hypothesis and optimizing outcomes. You might get conclusions like “this drug works somewhere under some conditions” rather than rather than a clean yes or no, which complicates labeling and real-world use.

Drug dosing

it can help identify the optimal dose of a drug

Bayesian methods allow investigators to continuously update beliefs about dose–response relationships, which is especially useful when dose effects aren’t clean or linear. This matters because bad dosing can result in clinical trial failure for drugs that might otherwise work, and traditional trial designs often finalize doses too early.

BUT. There’s a tradeoff in that bringing in priors from early studies can result in a trial that produces correct information within the context of the trial itself, but completely wrong when considering the drug overall. Using Bayesian methods can smooth out differences in the dose-response relationship in subpopulations and make data appear more precise than they are. Essentially, minimizing uncertainty. And optimizing for shorter trials can miss rare adverse events, long-term side effects, cumulative toxicity, and population-specific differences in dose responses.

Pediatric patient application

it can be used to extrapolate to pediatric populations, which, as you know, are often a forgotten population when drugs are developed

This is ethically powerful and politically defensible. This example was clearly chosen because of the moral framing around it… who wouldn’t want to support something that helps children? Children are often excluded from trials. Bayesian methods do enable the use of adult data as a prior to inform decisions around treating children.

But children are not just small adults. They have different metabolism, immune responses, risks (e.g., developmental risks)... Over-reliance on adult priors risks underestimating developmental harms and missing age-specific effects.

Phase II/II trials

And, for example, if you have a small clinical Phase II trial, that data can be informative to the Bayesian analysis of a Phase III clinical trial.

This shift is quite downplayed in the messaging, but it’s important. Phase II and Phase III trial data are usually treated as (mostly) independent. With a Bayesian approach, earlier trials become formal inputs, not just informal context. It does make sense from a scientific perspective to use the knowledge we have in future studies.

However, the tradeoff is that weaknesses, biases, and chance findings from small Phase II trials can be amplified rather than corrected, especially when early studies are underpowered or overly optimistic. Once embedded as priors, these early data can artificially drive subsequent analyses toward success that doesn’t really exist in the real world. The Phase III is then no longer independent confirmation. So it increases efficiency, but also increases the risk that uncertainty is buried rather than resolved.

If used well, Bayesian statistics could result in faster and smarter trials. If not, it could introduce bias, reduced transparency, reduced trust… and result in the already-strong players in the pharmaceutical market continuing to ‘win’ more often. Which brings me to…

Who wins? (Big Pharma… mostly)

We want companies and sponsors to benefit from the power of Bayesian statistics.

This says, “Don’t be afraid to bring us Bayesian designs.” Encouraging innovation; reducing regulatory fear.

But Bayesian trials are expensive. They’re hard to to design correctly.

Large pharma benefits the most, with their in-house statisticians, regulatory experience, and ability to run multiple sensitivity scenarios. Smaller biotech companies and academic trials may struggle without statistical expertise. So the approach favors larger organizations, which can reduce the diversity of innovation and consolidate power among the already-dominant players.

The political play

This guidance and messaging fits into the larger narrative that Makary has been constructing since his appointment, positioning him as a contrarian pushing back against ‘medical groupthink’ and a slow, bureaucratic FDA. It’s part of a pattern, which includes one-trial approval and plausible mechanism pathway announcements.

Makary frames these changes as positive by using using language like ‘common sense,’ ‘flexibility,’ and ‘modernization’; rhetoric that is highly effective from a political comms perspective as it preemptively characterizes the opposition and any calls for caution as ‘anti-progress’ or part of the bureaucracy he is opposing.

The danger is decoupling the narrative from reality.

The administration can claim victory based on announced policies and guidelines regardless of how these performs in practice. They could feasibly say that they modernized the FDA to bring cures to patients faster and point to the Bayesian statistics guidance as evidence… and the public, hearing the positive framing of a ‘leap forward’, etc, may view this as a significant accomplishment. But Bayesian methods have existed for years. Their impact depends entirely on how they’re implemented. That nuance disappears in the headline.

So political credit could be claimed for advancing science through deregulation even if the changes introduce risks or do not yield the promised benefits. Positive media coverage generated by an initial, simplified announcement can become political reality without real-world impact.

So it’s important to look at the detailed, often more complex, reality underneath bold announcements. The consistent theme of Makary’s FDA reforms is speed and flexibility. That’s not inherently negative, but do they hold up under scrutiny? There’s substantial risk of lowering the evidentiary standards for drug approval.

There’s also the issue that while flexibility is being promoted for therapeutics, leaked internal discussions suggest stricter evidentiary standards for vaccines. So is that ‘common sense’ approach being applied consistently, or is it being applied selectively according to political views?

The politicization of science has become a massive risk. When major scientific policy shifts are aligned with specific political agendas (deregulation, in this case), it creates the perception (and, likely the reality) that science at the FDA is being politicized, which reduces public trust in the agency’s scientific integrity. Former FDA leaders have explicitly warned about this.

Where science ends and messaging begins

The FDA’s guidance on Bayesian statistics isn’t pseudoscience. It’s a genuine approach. It could lead to better evidence and faster patient access to treatment… if it is applied carefully.

But the messaging around this matters.

The announcement made by the FDA is more focused on advancing a political narrative of deregulation and efficiency than on the actual science itself. Bayesian statistics are powerful tools, but whether this ‘very big step’ improves actual patient outcomes or just accelerates approvals remains to be seen.

When science becomes political, it’s easy for political credit to be claimed without any accountability for actual outcomes.

And that’s the part that’s worth watching.

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I personally think this is quite a good statement. There’s a lot of accountability in there for the impact of his experiences with mental illness. What he does next will show whether it’s genuine sentiment or not.

Commenters’ sentiments on Reddit are mixed, with many appreciating his demonstration of accountability and description of mental illness, and others questioning whether it is a PR move related to his new album release.

A few stood out to me:

These comments center on whether West actually wrote the statement it himself, and this skepticism highlights a common (yet counterproductive) tendency in how we evaluate public apologies. The immediate suspicion that a PR advisor crafted the message often leads to dismissals of its authenticity; however, this focus on authorship is a distraction.

He probably didn’t write that statement as it appears in print. But who put those words together matters less than the sentiment behind them. It’s the sincerity of the sentiment and the commitment to future action that require attention when statements like this come out, not who physically arranged the words on a page.

PR advisor involvement is justifiable and often necessary for effective communication.

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How PR advisors write statements

(Well, I should say, how this PR advisor writes statements, because I can only definitively speak for myself… but my approach is common among ethical practitioners)

Here’s how it usually works when I have a client who needs a statement written. While I do look at the whole situation and assess what the absolute best response (and associated sentiment from the person the apology is coming from) would be, I don’t write the statement from that analysis, give it to the client, and say, “This is how you feel”. No. That would be inauthentic. We don’t impose the most effective responses on our clients.

The best sentiment and approach is often not reality and doesn’t reflect how they actually see the situation or feel about it. It’s not what they want to say or can reliably stand behind. Remember that a statement is just words. It’s an explanation and a promise, and future words and actions must align with it for it to be effective. If a person doesn’t believe what they’re saying in a statement they put out, their future actions won’t match the sentiment of the statement and that will undo everything the apology was intended to do. So there’s no point in writing it.

This is one reason why sometimes, when an apology comes out, it’s criticized because it could have been better or didn’t go far enough. The public often wants the ideal apology… the one that would perfectly align with objective reality. What they are actually getting is the most accountable version of the truth that the individual or organization is prepared to offer at that moment. My role is to guide them toward that truth, not to fabricate it.

So what do I do? The first step doesn’t involve writing at all. It involves listening.

I determine my clients’ actual thoughts, feelings, and experiences regarding the situation and how they perceive it. I present the ‘best case’ to them, but ask them where it aligns, where it doesn’t, what is and isn’t true for them in it. I collect as much information as humanly possible through asking questions (or asking for written commentary, if they prefer that to conversation), and then I write a statement that captures my client’s true sentiment from what they’ve told me.

Yes, I advise on specific approaches and explain how each is likely to be received by the client’s stakeholders or play out in the media. I discuss intentions and goals and outcomes, what each part of the statement is intended to do, and how it will be received. I coach them toward demonstrating genuine accountability, accepting responsibility, and determining ways to move forward and rebuild trust. I look at the factors that contribute to whatever it is they’re apologizing for and determine how these need to be explained.

But I don’t put words in their mouth or write a statement that lies.

Sometimes, the statement we end up with isn’t at all what I’d write if I were writing it for myself, but these aren’t for me. If I think it’s best that someone puts out a statement accepting responsibility for something they have consistently refused to accept responsibility for, knowing that they will go on a YouTube Live and blame 10 other people for it in two weeks’ time… having them put out that statement would be a bad move because they’re not ready to issue it. It’s not true (yet… people do change their minds on accountability).

I don’t make up facts or write things that contradict my clients’ perspectives and feelings. I do help shape those things. But the final statement is a reflection of their sentiment, their words, reorganized for public consumption.

Why people have PR advisors write statements

Being able to feel remorse and a desire to make amends is a completely different skill from being able to write a cohesive and compelling public statement. I once had a client who sent me over a dozen long, rambling emails detailing their perspective on a situation (awesome, by the way - I want your honest info-dump, not a curated selection of points… it helps make the final product authentic). The key points for a powerful apology were all there, but they were buried in a torrent of emotion that would have undermined the message if released in its raw form.

My client could not have written the final statement I drafted, but every word of it was rooted in their own feelings and expressions.

A person should not have to be a master of public communication to be able to apologize effectively. That is why PR advisors exist. To help people express their truth in a way that can be heard and understood.

There is a clear distinction between getting a PR advisor to ‘spin’ a situation in a way that distorts the truth and getting help to express the truth effectively. The former is not ethical; the latter is both acceptable and often essential for genuine reconciliation.

Why we should think twice before criticizing someone for having a PR help them write their statement

There is a peculiar hypocrisy in how the public treats apologies from prominent figures. When a public figure issues a statement that is unpolished, emotional, or poorly worded, they are often criticized for their lack of professionalism and failure to grasp the gravity of the situation. The message is lost in the clumsy delivery, and the apology is deemed insufficient. They are told they should have sought professional help.

Yet… when a statement is articulate and demonstrates a clear understanding of what needs to be said, it can be dismissed it as a ‘PR move.’ The involvement of a PR advisor is seen as a sign of inauthenticity, and the person is criticized for not speaking from the heart. They are, in effect, punished for taking the very advice those in the first scenario were given.

This double-bind where there’s is no right way to apologize shifts the focus from the content and sincerity of the apology to a cynical guessing game about its origins.

This is counterproductive.

It leads to perpetual outrage where no attempt at reconciliation can ever be good enough and suggests that we are more interested in finding reasons to remain angry than in allowing for the possibility of genuine remorse and change.

Instead of dissecting an apology for traces of PR work, it’s much more productive to focus on the substance of the message and, more importantly, the actions that follow.

A well-written statement (regardless of who drafted it) is a promise.

The true test of its authenticity lies in whether that promise is kept.

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It’s the fundamental misunderstanding of what a reputational crisis is. And it’s rooted in attitude toward risk. We’ve often been trained to see crises as technical problems that can be solved with pre-planned mitigation. That might work for the mechanical aspects of project risks, but a reputational crisis is a social problem, not a technical one.

You’ve heard the saying that “failing to plan is planning to fail”, often attributed to Benjamin Franklin. But what if the plan itself is the failure? A whole lot of time gets wasted on crisis plans that simply don’t work in a situation they’re supposedly designed for. They might be outdated, never tested, fail because they’re treated as checkbox exercises… or fail because reputational crises are unpredictable. You can spend thousands on a plan that never gets used.

And businesses do. Often.

Why? Because although an outdated crisis plan (“but it was written last year”… it’s outdated, sorry) sitting in a drawer somewhere isn’t performing the function it was written for, it is providing a nice, comfortable (and unfortunately false) sense of security.

The fear of something going wrong makes us want a script to follow. Having a plan makes us feel like we’ve addressed the fear. But a solution that only addresses a symptom will only leave you with a hidden problem.

You wouldn’t turn up the radio to drown out the sound of a failing engine (OK, I have done this, but that was 20 years ago). So why do we treat reputational risk that way?

Technical problems versus social crises

A critical flaw I see repeatedly is the failure to distinguish between a technical problem and the social crisis it creates.

A technical problem has a clear cause and a predictable solution, and most of the time, your mitigation strategies will still apply months after you’ve put them in your risk register. Data breaches, product recalls, supply chain disruption… these are issues with technical problems that can be managed with a checklist. The social dimension of them? Not so much… Each of these issues also carries substantial reputational risk. Reputational crises unfold in real time and are substantially shaped by context, emotion, power dynamics, timing, and perception. Two organizations can face superficially similar situations and experience entirely different outcomes depending on how those factors interact and how they handle the social crisis aspect.

That’s why generic plans so often fail. Planning for specific scenarios is often ineffective because a social crisis can’t be controlled and neutralized in advance in the way a technical problem can. By all means imagine scenarios, but don’t mistake imagination for control, or rehearsal for prediction.

You can’t script your way out of a crisis of trust.

“Low Probability” is a dangerous illusion

This misunderstanding is most dangerous in relation to reputational risks that have a low probability of occurring but the potential to have an extremely high impact if they do.

That ‘low probability’ does a lot of work it has no business doing in building a sense of safety. One that shouldn’t be there.

We tend to focus on the ‘low probability’ and ignore the ‘high impact.’ And the impact of a reputational risk isn’t contained in the way a technical failure often is. It can spiral out of control fast. So, a little fear is a good thing when you’re working with something that has the potential to have a massive impact, even if it’s not considered likely to happen.

Take environmental risks, for example - one clear example of how reputational risks get misclassified rather than recognized. Those have their own category in a risk register and they’re often discussed with a compliance and regulatory focus, as if they are entirely separate from public perception. In practice, environmental and reputational risk are functionally inseparable because environmental harm, perceived lack of sustainability, accusations of greenwashing, etc., are extremely strong drivers of reputational damage. Treating technical compliance and reputation management as separate functions creates blind spots where severe public backlash, investor distrust, and market value loss occur regardless of whether regulatory standards are met.

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“I don’t even want to think about that…”

If someone tells me they don’t think a high-impact reputational risk is likely to become reality, I often ask them what they think would happen if it did. More often than not, I hear things like, “I don’t even want to think about that”, “I can’t even imagine this happening to us,” and “Thinking about that makes me paranoid for no reason”.

I’m not working with anyone who is obtuse or pathologically superstitious here. It’s just a very human tendency to be afraid of looking at the worst-case scenario and actively confronting the fact that it could become reality. Nobody wants to do that. It’s more comfortable to keep our eyes on the ‘low probability’ column and strategically place a coaster over the ‘high impact’ one.

But thinking about reputational risk isn’t meant to be comfortable.

And you do need to think about it. Just not in the ‘address this with a crisis plan we might never use’ kind of way.

No reputational crisis is the same

The truth is that no crisis plan can prepare you for a reputational crisis in the way you hope it will. That traditional crisis plan you might want will function less as an operational tool and more as emotional reassurance. It’ll help you believe you’re prepared and make the fear of reputational damage easier to live with… But reassurance is not readiness.

So if scripted plans don’t work, what does?

It’s decision-making capacity under pressure that you need. It’s harder, but it’s also simpler and less expensive than a traditional crisis plan. It requires three shifts in thinking:

• From prediction to preparation: Acknowledge that reputational risk exists and that you can’t predict and plan for every possible scenario. Instead, prepare your team to handle the unpredictable. Know who to bring in, what your values are, and how you’ll make decisions when the stakes are high.

• From control to influence: Accept that you will not be able to script your way out of every scenario. You can’t control a reputational crisis. You can only influence it. This means shifting your focus from internal processes to external perceptions, listening more than you talk, and prioritizing transparency over spin.

• From reassurance to readiness: Let go of the theatrical crisis plan that makes you feel good and focus on what will actually make you ready. This means stress-testing your decision-making processes, building relationships with key stakeholders before you need them, and having a team that can assess a situation as it is, not as you wish it were.

To be clear, this isn’t a call to abandon preparation altogether, but a rejection of scripted, scenario-based crisis plans that assume reputational risk can be neutralized in advance.

For most organizations, this means knowing in advance who you can bring in immediately when something happens. Someone who understands the interplay of the technical, legal, and social factors, and who can help you slow down enough to make accurate decisions while maintaining enough speed to shape the narrative.

Examined fear is a tool… use it

The problem isn’t fear itself. It’s what we do with it. Unexamined fear drives avoidance, denial, and false certainty. Examined fear sharpens attention and judgment. Confronting the nature of reputational risk requires examined fear. It’s a tool, so use it… instead of letting it drive you into denial or cosmetic solutions that won’t hold up over time.

Of course, discomfort doesn’t guarantee good decisions, but unwarranted comfort will almost always result in blind spots.

If you’re too comfortable with how prepared you feel, that comfort itself may be the biggest risk of all.

Usually, when commentary on a specific person takes over the feed like this, demonstrating a crisis escalation timeline typical of social media crises (see below), they’ve recently done something that set it off. And usually, I can find what that is in a couple of minutes.

Not this time.

I couldn’t find a triggering incident in which Brown herself did something specific in the past week.

Instead, the discourse appears to have originated from these two posts below, which catalyzed a broader discussion on Brown, reflecting a long-standing sentiment among some Black scholars and activists that their work has been systemically overlooked and appropriated by more privileged figures.

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What are people saying?

[NOTE: I have an interest in this situation from a professional perspective. I am looking at it as an analysis of viral online discourse from a crisis management perspective. This post offers some insight into what I do when I look into online discourse for my clients. It should not be interpreted as a definitive statement on the individuals or issues involved.]

The core accusations against Brown currently being discussed on Threads are as follows (these are summaries of what people are saying, not statements on the validity of any of the claims):

Intellectual Co-Option: The primary claim is that Brown has built her multimillion-dollar career by taking concepts, theories, and research from Black women scholars and theorists without adequate credit or attribution. Critics argue she repackages these ideas in a “race-neutral” and “class-neutral” way that is more palatable to a mainstream white audience.

Name Controversy: A secondary, though highly discussed, point of contention is the claim that Brown’s given name is Cassandra, and that she uses her middle name, Brené, to sound “more white” and benefit from racial ambiguity. This claim, even if unproven, has been cited on Threads as evidence of a deliberate attempt to distance herself from Blackness while profiting from Black intellectual labor, with numerous other posters commenting that Brown has used the name since childhood.

This discourse did not emerge from a single recent event.

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Sentiment Analysis

We use sentiment analysis to analyze public discourse in crisis management to assess reputational risk. It helps us understand how people are reacting, determine whether their reactions are mostly negative or positive, gauge the emotional intensity of the situation, and get a clear picture of the underlying feelings driving the conversation. This knowledge of public sentiment helps us craft messaging that speaks to the critical audience. It helps us understand which groups are most affected and where communications should be focused.

Sentiment analysis also helps identify emerging issues early so we can intervene before escalation and decide when to escalate, apologize, and change strategy.

This conversation, like most in any oppositional crisis, is highly polarized. While the most engagement is on critical posts accusing Brown of intellectual co-optation, there are also significant defensive, nuanced, and confused segments of the discourse.

Looking at posts on Threads from January 22-24, 2026, the spike in posts about Brown is clear:

I categorized the sentiment distribution in these posts as follows:

Looking at the engagement (number of likes across posts in each category) revealed that the critical posts garnered the highest engagement (which is not unexpected):

I then looked at the key themes emerging in the posts:

The most common themes by category are:

Critical: Co-optation of Black women's work, lack of attribution, race-neutral framing.

This is the most engaged-with category, driven by the initial viral posts. The sentiment is characterized by anger, frustration, and a sense of long-overdue reckoning. Users echoed the core claims of the posts I shared above, with one user (jessicaddickson) calling Brown “The Patron Saint of White Women.” The emotional core of this sentiment is the feeling that Black women’s intellectual labor is consistently erased and monetized by white figures.

Supportive: Her work is transformative, she credits sources, she has platformed Black voices.

Defenders of Brené Brown, such as user the.chocolate.therapist, argued that the critiques were “brain dead” and “misinformed.” They point to instances where Brown has credited other authors and platformed Black voices on her podcasts. This group often highlights the personal, transformative impact of Brown’s work on their lives and views the criticism as an unfair attack on a person of integrity.

Nuanced: "Two things can be true," critiques are valid but work is still valuable, need more evidence.

This significant portion of the conversation acknowledges the validity of the critiques while also recognizing the value of Brown’s work. Many users, like jalisa.reads.anywhere, shared that their Black therapists had recommended Brown’s books while also providing critical context. This group often calls for a more detailed, evidence-based discussion rather than outright cancellation.

Confused (Seeking Context): "What did she do?", need more context, first time hearing about this.

Many users are simply trying to understand the situation. Posts asking for context and specific examples of the alleged co-option are common, indicating that for many, this is the first time they have encountered such criticism of Brown.

There was also one piece of misinformation that stood out to me, where one user stated the following:

The tea on her is HOT tho because apparently she stole the entire “Let Them Theory” idea from someone else.

That is misinformation specifically because Brené Brown didn’t write the Let Them Theory. Mel Robbins did.

Strategic Insights from the Sentiment Analysis

[It’s important to note that this analysis is time-sensitive and reflects just one specific moment in the ongoing discourse.]

Analyzing sentiment data provides important insights for developing a crisis management strategy beyond the “positive vs. negative” perspective.

This reputational risk matrix is a map of the key issues and their potential to spread, along with the severity of the damage they could inflict on Brown’s brand, which is built on trust, vulnerability, and authenticity:

The most dangerous issues are the core accusations of co-opting Black women’s work and systemic attribution failures. These strike at the heart of Brown’s academic and personal integrity and have high virality potential because they are easily understood, emotionally resonant, and fit into a broader, pre-existing social narrative about racial and economic justice. These accusations represent a fundamental challenge to Brown’s credibility. The challenges to Brown’s academic credibility, such as one post that noted that she does not submit her work for peer review, are also significant, as her academic background is an aspect that establishes her trustworthiness among other, perhaps less ‘qualified’ speakers on similar topics.

The “Cassandra” name controversy may seem trivial; however, because it has been used as “evidence” for the broader co-optation narrative, it has a high likelihood of going viral, even if its direct reputational impact is lower. It could be used as a symbol of perceived inauthenticity.

Nuanced critics are a key battleground as they sit in the middle of the matrix. They are not outright hostile, but their concerns are valid and could be swayed toward the critical camp. Ignoring them would be a major strategic error, as winning their understanding and respect is key to containment and narrative control.

The sentiment analysis also reveals a conversation driven by high-intensity emotions, as the key issues are deeply personal and painful for many of the participants. The critical voice is fueled by outrage at the perceived injustice and a sense of betrayal, with a high emotional temperature. This indicates that, for this group, Brown’s work is perceived as harmful. The underlying feeling in this critical group is a sense of invalidation stemming from the perception that their intellectual heritage and labor have been erased. A purely logical or defensive response will fail because it does not address this emotional core.

The supportive group’s primary emotion is defensiveness and protection. They feel a personal connection to Brown and her work, and the attacks feel like an attack on their own experiences and values. They are also dismissive of the criticism, which can inadvertently escalate the conflict by invalidating the critics’ feelings. Invalidation is a key underlying feeling for this group as well, but in having their positive, transformative experiences with Brown’s work invalidated.

Not all voices in this conversation are equal in their influence or their stake in the outcome. A targeted communication strategy requires segmenting the audience and prioritizing engagement.

Though a smaller group in terms of sheer numbers, Black women scholars and activists have the highest influence and moral authority in this specific conversation. Their voices are the origin of the critique. Engaging with this group, even indirectly, is the most critical and most difficult task. The goal is not “change their mind”, but to demonstrate genuine listening and respect. This group is the top priority in any response.

DEI professionals and the academic community are also highly influential and are watching closely, concerned with issues of citation, ethics, and social justice. Their assessment could significantly impact Brown’s professional standing, and they’re likely looking for a response that is intellectually rigorous and ethically sound. This group is the second priority.

Mental health professionals, including therapists, express mixed sentiments. Many use her work in their practice, but are also trained to be critical and aware of social context. This group is strongly representative of the nuanced critics and is a key audience to engage with thoughtful, substantive content. This group is the third priority.

While the largest in size, casual observers/media, and supporters have less influence on the core debate. Messaging for these groups should be simpler and more direct. Supporters (fourth priority) need reassurance that their support remains valid, while casual observers and the media (fifth priority) need a clear, concise narrative that counters the negative one.

At the time I wrote this, the optimal intervention window (the first 12-18 hours) was already missed. A rapid, empathetic acknowledgment at this stage could have significantly reshaped the narrative and demonstrated responsiveness. However, ~60 hours later, the narrative has been allowed to continue and intensify, making any subsequent response more reactive than proactive. However, the intensity of the discourse has peaked, and the conversation is fragmenting into different subgroups. A more deliberate and thoughtful response aimed at long-term recovery and not immediate containment can help here.

The Response Strategy

Given the analysis, a passive or defensive strategy is untenable. The goal is not to win the argument but to transform a moment of crisis into an opportunity for growth, accountability, and a strengthened, more resilient brand. This requires a strategy rooted in Brown’s own teachings on vulnerability, courage, and accountability.

But I’m not really writing this for Brown. I’m writing it for you. Because this type of viral storm could happen to you, and the more prepared you are to handle it, the more likely it is that you won’t make the type of mistakes that make these situations worse.

If you find yourself at the center of social media discourse like this that is calling your own credibility, motivations, intentions, and authenticity into question, this may help you get through it and use it as an opportunity for growth and improvement.

Missed the 12-48 hour optimal window? There’s still time for thoughtful recovery… don’t knee-jerk now.

Silence vs. Engagement

Silence can be interpreted as guilt, arrogance, or a dismissal of the concerns. And it can allow the negative narrative to dominate and solidify… However, in some cases, it can also prevent fanning the flames of a short-lived controversy.

Engagement, via a well-crafted response, can demonstrate accountability, empathy, and a willingness to learn. However, a defensive or poorly worded response can significantly escalate the crisis.

The decision to remain silent or engage should be made according to:

• The credibility of the criticism

• The severity of the issue

• The availability of accurate information

• Your ability to respond thoughtfully without escalating the situation

If you’re going to engage:

The strategic goal of your response should acknowledge the validity of the discourse and demonstrate genuine accountability. For example, in this case, are there shortcomings in attribution or framing? Acknowledge them. Reaffirm commitment to the central aspect being called into question (ethical scholarship and the amplification of marginalized voices, in this situation) to help rebuild trust with key audience segments and protect long-term brand integrity.

• Acknowledge/listen

Identify your guiding principles and ensure your response aligns with them. For Brown, an effective response would model vulnerability rather than defensiveness, as this is a key principle she espouses, along with showing listening rather than a knee-jerk response.

Acknowledge the uncomfortable truths, engage with the difficult feedback, and look at what you can do moving forward.

Within the initial 24 to 48 hours, focus on acknowledgment and listening. You could issue a brief, human-centered statement on the platform(s) where the discourse is occurring. In this case, that could involve thanking the people leading the conversation (particularly Black women scholars) and explicitly affirming a commitment to listening, reflection, and learning. The tone of initial messaging like this should be restrained and sincere, avoiding defensive apologies, excuses, public debates, or promises of immediate resolution.

The purpose of this phase is not to resolve the issue, but to signal respect for the discourse and a willingness to engage thoughtfully.

• Action/engage

Next, focus on action and substantive engagement. You might write a comprehensive response published on a personal platform, allowing space for nuance, directly naming and addressing the core criticisms. In this case, for example, concerns around co-optation, attribution, and the limitations of race-neutral frameworks. This response should take specific responsibility where appropriate, acknowledge unintended impact regardless of intent, and transparently address sensitive issues that have contributed to mistrust. You should also include, where possible, concrete, nonnegotiable actions that demonstrate accountability beyond your words. (Communication cannot fix everything… actions must match communication for reputation rehabilitation). In this case, targeted private outreach to professional and institutional stakeholders could help rebuild trust and invite dialogue outside the public spotlight.

• Integrate/change

The final phase involves long-term integration and sustained change. All commitments you have made in earlier phases must be followed through transparently and consistently. The lessons from the critique should be visibly reflected in your future actions. In this case, for example, that could be through stronger attribution practices and an ongoing commitment to amplifying marginalized voices. The goal is to demonstrate that the response is a permanent change in approach, not a reactionary measure to “make the issue go away”.

The sentiment analysis here suggests this could be a serious and credible reputational crisis, rooted in emotionally and intellectually grounded critique from influential audiences. If you face similar, issuing a dismissive or defensive response risks lasting damage to credibility. However, responding with humility, accountability, and meaningful action provides an opportunity to both mitigate harm and strengthen the integrity and long-term impact of your work.

The path forward in situations like this is almost always leadership through the discomfort of the critique.

Participating in online discourse?

It’s worth considering how you interact with viral topics when they come up on your for-you page to determine whether you really want to contribute to the discourse. Before reacting, take a moment to understand the context. Are people reacting without full information? Look for primary sources and a range of perspectives.

If you agree with the criticism, consider amplifying the voices of the people most affected. For example, in a situation like this, instead of stating your opinion, share the posts, articles, and books by Black women scholars at the center of the conversation.

If you’re not sure, it’s time to consider getting comfortable with the idea that two things can be true simultaneously… It is possible to have benefited from someone’s work while also acknowledging its valid criticisms. You don’t have to fall into binary, “for-or-against” thinking.

Not all online debates are productive. If a conversation devolves into personal attacks or bad-faith arguments… disengage.

In this particular case, your energy may be better spent reading the work of the scholars being discussed.

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(Note to readers who don’t care about this situation at all: I promise this isn’t going to become a regular topic here!).

I argued that based on the initial evidence, Taylor Swift’s team had constructed a defensible narrative. The core of their strategy was to create a distinction between Swift’s actions (being present at a meeting and discussing the Justin Baldoni situation with Blake Lively) and her intent (claiming she had no premeditated plan to influence Baldoni). I concluded that while the optics weren’t perfect, the narrative wasn’t definitively compromised.

I also noted that “Unless further information comes to light that clearly demonstrates intent… this aspect of the narrative remains supported.”

Well, that further information has now come to light. We now have the actual texts.

I wrote that previous when only the four screenshots of the court documents were available.

Some updates are required…

Let’s start with this text exchange:

In my original article, I wrote:

It [the court document screenshot] establishes that Swift did participate in this meeting. What it doesn’t establish is that Swift knew that Baldoni would be there or that she knew Lively intended her to read the scene so that she could defend it to Baldoni…

and

The information about Lively wanting Swift to read the scene because Baldoni was still there when Swift was on her way to Lively’s apartment came from Lively in an explanation of how Swift came to be at that meeting, talking about Lively’s rewritten scene. There’s nothing in this that suggests that Lively told Swift that Baldoni was there or that this was her intention behind sending the script.

Both referring to this document:

The texts show that Lively did tell Swift that Baldoni might still be at her apartment when Swift arrived. They show that Lively told Swift that she thought Swift’s commentary on the rewritten scene would help get Baldoni to consider using it.

These texts somewhat dismantle the narrative in Swift’s team’s response in the Daily Mail and CBS News (below):

‘Taylor is proud of the film because her music was featured in it, which gave her a sense of involvement, though she wasn’t fully aware of the extent of the project’s developments,’ they said.

‘She is confused by the claims in the suit, as her connection to Blake is purely a friendship, with no interest in influencing or controlling Blake’s projects.’

The source insisted that Taylor did not purposely plan to be there during the meeting.

Instead, they said she was simply coming over to hang out with her pal but arrived while the meeting - which was supposed to have been wrapped up - was still going.

‘She finds Justin’s interpretation of the encounter perplexing, and those close to her suspect she’s being drawn into the situation as a means to target Blake,’ the insider continued.

‘This was the first time that Taylor ever met Justin. She had no idea who he was and Taylor was simply being polite. She was polite to him as she is to everyone she meets.’

This statement that “She [Swift] had no idea who he [Baldoni] was” is directly contradicted by Lively’s text to Swift shortly before the meeting:

“If you get here w this doofus director of my movie is still here (I’ll be ushering him out, but hope he’s still here) can you do me a huge favor. I need help with him… Can you tell him you’re excited for the movie… What a magnetic scene that is… So having the greatest living story teller unknowingly echo to him how much you love what we’re doing… will go such a long way”

And Swift’s response is not one of confusion or reluctance:

“I’ll do anything for you !!”

This exchange makes it harder to believe the narrative that there was no premeditation or intent. The meeting was clearly not extensively pre-planned, as Swift was on her way to Lively’s apartment when she was sent the scene for review, along with Lively’s suggestion that she talk about it if Baldoni was still present. They hadn’t talked out it for days/weeks/months prior. But Swift was aware that he might be there and that there was a job for her to do with that scene… This statement below is quite strategically worded, given the information we have now. It still holds because Swift didn’t ‘purposely plan to be’ present at the meeting, but instead became aware that she would likely be present at it while she was traveling to Lively’s apartment:

‘The source insisted that Taylor did not purposely plan to be there during the meeting.’

Lively’s follow-up text after the meeting, celebrating Swift’s “heroic” performance and how the “clown” Baldoni was “falling for all of it”, and Swift’s reply, “I WON THE LOTTERY,” suggests that she was, at the time, a willing participant in Lively’s goal to get Baldoni to use this rewritten scene.

The strategy of separating action from intent is a little less viable when texts explicitly reveal some intent behind the action. Swift may not have had intent, but she knew what Lively’s was.

Swift was not a passive supporter of Lively

Swift’s team relied on the friendship between her and Lively in their response last year:

‘She is confused by the claims in the suit, as her connection to Blake is purely a friendship, with no interest in influencing or controlling Blake’s projects.’

However, even with these texts, their strategy of arguing that Swift was did not have “interest in influencing or controlling Blake’s projects” doesn’t entirely fall apart… because when you’re friends with someone and that friend has an issue with another person that they have clearly (based on the content of some of the other texts) discussed with you in detail, you’re likely to want to take the opportunity to support your friend if a situation arises where you can. So Swift’s intent may have been ‘support my friend’, not ‘influence or control my friend’s projects’.

Whether that is true or not is definitely up for interpretation.

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Swift’s team’s statement that she “finds Justin’s interpretation of the encounter perplexing, and those close to her suspect she’s being drawn into the situation as a means to target Blake” is strategically distancing her actions from the effect of them. The encounter happened; Swift was a willing participant, but Baldoni misinterpreted the situation as intent that wasn’t there and is using that interpretation to strengthen his case against Lively.

(This is not a bad strategy for Baldoni’s team - in this article, I’m looking at these texts specifically from the angle of how they do or don’t align with Swift’s team’s messaging, not breaking down Baldoni’s team’s strategy or the overall situation. There’s too much going on in this case to cover all of it.)

The next set of texts, in which Swift refers to Baldoni as “this bitch” when referring to an article about Baldoni’s past sexual trauma (the “something is coming” part, I believe, refers to the contents of this article), are still consistent with this friendship narrative. As I said in my previous article, it’s not unusual for a friend to say things like this when they think they’re being a good friend to someone in a bad situation.

And Lively obviously spent a lot of time talking about the situation with Swift:

That Swift felt she “was used by Blake Lively in her war with Justin Baldoni” and “resents Blake calling her one of her ‘dragons’ and leveraging her name” (as reported in TMZ) after finding out that her encounter with Baldoni and these texts associated with the situation were being used in the case… makes sense. Perhaps with some perspective on the situation, she realized that, while she thought she was acting as a good friend, she was being manipulated into becoming an active participant in Lively’s campaign against Baldoni. Perhaps she started to change her perspective on what actually happened between Lively and Baldoni. (I don’t think we’ll ever know.)

Swift’s team built a narrative around the absence of intent, and while these texts complicate that framing, they do not conclusively dismantle it. The strategy is weaker now but still workable, provided it is not further stress-tested. At this point, I expect radio silence from Swift’s team unless anything else comes out... Silence may be the least risky move, as any attempt to refine or restate the narrative risks drawing sharper attention to intent, where the available evidence is now far less forgiving.

One thing we can all learn from this is that anything we say in writing can be used against us… and we’d better make sure we (a) have a clear understanding of how it might be interpreted when it’s no longer private and (b) are comfortable defending it when it’s no longer read by the person it was written for.

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When it first came out that Taylor Swift had been caught up in the Justin Baldoni/Blake Lively controversy in early 2025, her team had a clear response: Swift was acting as Lively’s friend and was not trying to influence or control decisions related to the movie. For context on the situation, from the Daily Mail:

Justin alleged that the singer - who was not directly named in the lawsuit but whose name was included in text screenshots to accompany his claims - made him feel like he 'needed to comply with Blake's direction for the script' after she showed up at a meeting they were having and began to excessively 'praise' her writing.

The court documents relating to those text screenshots have now been released.

Many of the reactions on Reddit are… not exactly favorable toward Swift. Here’s one example that contains most of the negative sentiment I’ve seen:

But DO the documents indicate that Taylor Swift and her team lied?

Let’s take a look at what they said before the court documents were unsealed and the alignment between that narrative and what the documents show.

In the January 17, 2025, Daily Mail exclusive, a source had the following to say about Swift’s involvement (or lack thereof):

‘Taylor is proud of the film because her music was featured in it, which gave her a sense of involvement, though she wasn’t fully aware of the extent of the project’s developments,’ they said.

‘She is confused by the claims in the suit, as her connection to Blake is purely a friendship, with no interest in influencing or controlling Blake’s projects.’

The source insisted that Taylor did not purposely plan to be there during the meeting.

Instead, they said she was simply coming over to hang out with her pal but arrived while the meeting - which was supposed to have been wrapped up - was still going.

‘She finds Justin’s interpretation of the encounter perplexing, and those close to her suspect she’s being drawn into the situation as a means to target Blake,’ the insider continued.

‘This was the first time that Taylor ever met Justin. She had no idea who he was and Taylor was simply being polite. She was polite to him as she is to everyone she meets.’

In May 2025, Swift's team shared the following (source: CBS News):

What’s in the court documents (obtained from Reddit):

This first screenshot covers the narrative that Swift read Lively’s rewrite of a movie scene and praised it in a meeting with Baldoni. It establishes that Swift did participate in this meeting. What it doesn’t establish is that Swift knew that Baldoni would be there or that she knew Lively intended her to read the scene so that she could defend it to Baldoni.

The information in this does not conflict with this quote from the Daily Mail:

The source insisted that Taylor did not purposely plan to be there during the meeting.

Instead, they said she was simply coming over to hang out with her pal but arrived while the meeting - which was supposed to have been wrapped up - was still going.

‘She finds Justin’s interpretation of the encounter perplexing, and those close to her suspect she’s being drawn into the situation as a means to target Blake,’ the insider continued.

And it doesn’t show that Swift’s intent was to make Baldoni “feel like he ‘needed to comply with Blake’s direction for the script’”. Lively’s text to Swift after the meeting certainly comes across as though Lively could have believed Swift to have been doing this, but Lively’s interpretation doesn’t equate to pre-planned, intentional interference. That text could be considered to conflict with this:

‘She had no idea who he was and Taylor was simply being polite. She was polite to him as she is to everyone she meets.’

However. We know nothing of how that discussion between Baldoni and Swift actually went or how polite (or not) it was. Just Lively’s interpretation. A third party’s interpretation does not dictate an individual’s intent.

And it’s Swift’s intentions that she and her team clarified in their narrative. (These documents and texts are new to us, but it’s almost certain that Swift’s team had the contents when responding last year.) There is no denial that she was there. It’s why she was there and what for that they countered. And their narrative isn’t inconsistent with the court document.

Without any intent, the statement that Swift “was not involved in any… creative decision” holds. Passive commentary interpreted as pressure by a third party doesn’t equal intent to be involved in a creative decision.

The information about Lively wanting Swift to read the scene because Baldoni was still there when Swift was on her way to Lively’s apartment came from Lively in an explanation of how Swift came to be at that meeting, talking about Lively’s rewritten scene. There’s nothing in this that suggests that Lively told Swift that Baldoni was there or that this was her intention behind sending the script.

I can see how Swift could have read the scene on the way and gotten into a discussion praising and defending it when she arrived at Lively’s apartment, without, as the Daily Mail source stated, intending to influence or control the project. At least, I can see how Swift and her team could credibly present this situation.

(Note: Everything written here is commentary and speculation - we don’t know what happened, I’m just looking at the narratives and considering the strategy).

There could be more texts and documents that haven’t been unsealed (or that I hadn’t seen at the time I wrote this) that change things, but for now, this aspect of the narrative remains supported, and Swift’s team could credibly reiterate it with a focus on how Baldoni and Lively are both attributing intent to Swift that wasn’t there. Which brings me to the next point: Swift and Lively’s friendship.

Bitches and tiny violins

This screenshot shows a text Swift sent Lively before the release of the New York Times article discussing Baldoni’s team’s alleged smear campaign against Lively:

Does that text give a little ‘mean girl’ energy? Yes. But it’s out of context, so we don’t know what Lively had told Swift about the article or the situation at this point. And it doesn’t conflict with this narrative:

‘She [Swift] is confused by the claims in the suit, as her connection to Blake is purely a friendship, with no interest in influencing or controlling Blake’s projects.’

And neither does this, in my opinion:

Calling someone your friend doesn’t like a ‘bitch’, talking about being an ally in a situation where your friend has told you she’s having issues with someone, critiquing the strategy of the ‘adversary’… those things can all be interpreted as being a good friend in response to a friend’s bad situation.

It’s been widely reported that Lively wanted power over the movie. Swift mentioning “more power over the film” here fits that narrative, but it’s also not inconsistent with the narrative that Swift herself had “no interest in influencing or controlling Blake’s project”.

It’s also not inconsistent with the narrative that Swift “feels she was used by Blake Lively in her war with Justin Baldoni” and “resents Blake calling her one of her ‘dragons’ and leveraging her name”.

These texts, Lively’s text to Swift after the meeting, the involvement of Swift in the lawsuit, Lively referring to Swift as her ‘dragon’… these all support the narrative that Swift distanced herself from Lively because she was being misrepresented. Not “throwing her [Lively] under the bus” but perhaps genuinely distancing herself because Lively had mentally placed Swift in a more influential role than she had in reality. It’s entirely conceivable that Lively used Swift to try to exert power over Baldoni but didn’t tell Swift this. So Swift believed her role to be that of a supportive friend until it became otherwise in the lawsuit and media narratives.

(Again, just my interpretation of how I think Swift and her team can plausibly maintain their narrative, not an opinion on what actually happened since we don’t know.)

Swift’s narrative isn’t compromised… yet

It’s too soon to say that she and her team lied.

Based on the screenshots here (which are the only documents available/that I had seen at the time of writing) and the documented responses of Swift’s team to her involvement last year, it doesn’t appear that the newly unsealed documents massively contradict Swift’s narrative. My prediction is that they will reiterate exactly the same narrative, separating Swift’s actions from the intent being ascribed to her by Lively/Baldoni.

Unless further information comes to light that clearly demonstrates intent…

(Written on January 20, 2026. As this is a fast-moving story, most of what is written here could conceivably be completely incorrect and/or irrelevant by the time you read it, depending on what comes out next…)

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“My group has never plagiarized,” she said. “Look through all of our work. There’s no plagiarism!”

I understood her frustration. The comment had been part of an otherwise quite positive reviewer response. The flagged section comprised three paragraphs of introductory material that were phrased too closely to the introductory sections of two of her group’s previous publications. (If you’re not in academia, yes, self-plagiarism is a thing [specifically, a thing you cannot do], primarily because the copyright of an article gets transferred to the publisher, so technically you’re reusing their text. I have opinions on this that I suspect many journals… and perhaps academics… would dislike, which I will save for another post).

In other words, it was an easy fix with paraphrasing and citations.

But the author was very caught up in the accusation. Understandably so, since plagiarism isn’t something any academic wants to be known for. It also feels like a personal attack when someone accuses you of doing something that goes against your moral code. You want to defend yourself. Prove them wrong.

She was concerned that the reviewer’s comment regarding “excessive similarities in the introduction section indicating plagiarism” would get out of the peer review process. “I read PubPeer,” she said, “I never thought I’d end up on it!“

We worked through the realities of the situation and how she wouldn’t end up on PubPeer for pre-publication errors in paraphrasing her own work. That reviewers aren’t in the habit of spreading information from the peer review process online.

The response to reviewers that we sent, which was well-received, contained this explanation:

Thank you for raising this concern. We would like to clarify that the passages in question draw on our previously published papers [citations]. The similarities reflect an overlap in framing, rather than unattributed use of others’ material. However, we fully agree that the current wording is too close to that in the earlier publications. Thus, we have substantially revised and paraphrased the affected paragraphs, and, where appropriate, cited the prior papers in a manner consistent with journal policy. Furthermore, we have reviewed the entire manuscript to ensure compliance with best practices regarding originality and citation.

The version she wanted to send also contained this:

We would also like to note that our research group has an established record of adherence to publication ethics and has never engaged in plagiarism.

I took it out.

Why?

Because “I/my group has never engaged in plagiarism” is the most dangerous thing you can say in response to plagiarism allegations.

It’s unlikely in this specific case that any of the reviewers would have scoured this researcher group’s previous work for citation errors, misattributions, or incidental similarities. However, if you’re accused of plagiarism publicly on a site like PubPeer or in the media (which is what happened in several high-profile cases, including Claudine Gay), and you issue an absolute denial, somebody might.

And they might find something.

Even if you’ve never intentionally plagiarized.

If something is found, you then have another issue. A credibility issue. It doesn’t matter that you weren’t intentionally acting in bad faith. The absolute denial in plagiarism cases is such a high-risk strategy because it (a) invites anyone (including those with not-so-great intent) to audit your entire publication history using plagiarism software and side-by-side comparisons and (b) allows them to frame minor oversights that would otherwise be addressable and correctable as proof that you are lying, that you’re covering something up, or that you exhibit a pattern of misconduct.

Simply put, the absolute denial gives you no room for error.

Absolute denials are legalistic responses to an ethical problem.

They raise the standard of proof against you and come across as defensive, which, unfortunately, makes people want to dig more and find out what you’re being so defensive about. It gives you absolutely no room to adapt your response as the situation evolves. “I’ve never plagiarized… apart from that part in that paper, and that section of that article… I can explain…” which is extremely difficult to reconcile credibly.

The reason someone might find something if they’re scouring your work, intentionally looking for something, is that if you’ve written a lot, the likelihood of unintentional overlap, imperfect paraphrasing, or citation error is… non-trivial.

We don’t always know when our thoughts aren’t our own. When we read a lot and/or write a lot, we internalize a lot of language from others and that we have written ourselves that may come back as a new ‘original’ idea sometime in the future… and we don’t recognize that we’ve read or said it before. This isn’t a new concept. I particularly like this quote, which I found in this article and was originally published here (see how I’m very intentionally trying not to plagiarize):

(May I quickly point out the use of the em dash in this quote, which is from 1983 and definitely NOT ChatGPT. I do miss being able to use those.)

If you’ve thought something was original but it was actually recalled, and recalled very specifically without attribution… you’ve unintentionally plagiarized. Perhaps controversial of me to say this, but it doesn’t really matter unless you’ve been accused of plagiarizing something else, someone wants to prove you’ve done it before, and you’ve said you never have.

There are also only so many ways to say certain things in niche academic fields. I’ve lost count of the number of ways I’ve tried to paraphrase the basic definition of Alzheimer’s disease. It’s also easy for paraphrases to end up closer to the original than you want them to be after multiple rounds of edits. Perhaps your editor has cleaned up the text to improve clarity, and it’s now exactly what the source material said… do you check every sentence against the source again after 10 people have made their changes to your file? Maybe. Probably not.

And then there’s citation errors and misattributions. You click the wrong source in EndNote. Two numbered citations get transposed. Now you’re misrepresenting source material, but you haven’t done it intentionally. Or a citation gets deleted in the editing process, you don’t notice, and now you’ve used someone else’s idea without attribution.

These errors above are correctable. They are not intentionally deceptive. The solution is to revise, cite, correct. Most plagiarism isn’t intentional.

But that doesn’t matter if someone is trying to build a case against you.

This is what people who are accused of plagiarism get wrong:

They defend against the wrong issue, and they do it forcefully.

The main reason a person accused of plagiarism makes the mistake of saying they’ve never plagiarized, thus eliminating their ability to credibly defend themselves if unintentional errors like the ones described above are found, is that they are fundamentally addressing the wrong thing.

Plagiarism is NOT the issue (in most cases).

The issue is integrity.

When you’re accused of plagiarism, your stakeholders (the journal, the editors, readers, your employers, your collaborators, your students etc.) aren’t looking to be told that you don’t plagiarize. They’re not asking, “Do you steal other people’s ideas?”, they’re asking, “Can I still trust you?” Subtly different things.

When you see plagiarism as the issue, that leads to a defensive “I don’t plagiarize” attempt to demonstrate perfection in a way that nobody could possibly think you would ever plagiarize. This is that defensiveness thing again, which tends to have the opposite effect of what you want. It undermines rather than builds trust.

They don’t actually want you to show perfection. They want you to show integrity.

So the goal is never to prove absolute innocence but to demonstrate openness, accountability, credibility, and integrity. Acknowledging the potential for unintentional errors is not an admission of misconduct. It shows that you are aware of the potential for error and capable of taking accountability for and correcting any incidental mistakes you may have made. It shows that you respect the process and are acting in good faith.

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A better response reframes the situation around your values and the process. For example:

“I take attribution and originality seriously and have not knowingly presented someone else’s work as my own. As I have written extensively, I acknowledge the possibility of citation errors or unintentional phrasing that may resemble others’ in my work. If such mistakes are present, I am committed to correcting them. I am reviewing the concerns carefully and will address any legitimate issues with transparency.”

This type of response acknowledges the seriousness of the allegations without being overly defensive, it gives you room to address any errors that come up that you weren’t aware of by not trapping you with absolutist phrasing, it shows that you’re open to and committed to making corrections, and it makes your ethical values clear.

It also shows that you’re approaching the situation as a level-headed collaborator with an interest in truth and accuracy, not as someone who is under attack and seeing critics as automatic adversaries. It:

1. Affirms values

2. Acknowledges human fallibility

3. Commits to corrective action

This type of response answers that question your stakeholders have: Can we still trust you?

Because they don’t want you to say, “Nothing is wrong”.

They want you to say, “Here’s how I’ll handle this if something is wrong.”

Again, it’s quite a subtle difference, but it’s a difference that will determine whether the accusation becomes something that you overcome and use to strengthen your reputation and working relationships or something that defines you in all the ways you don’t want to be defined.

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U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem declared it “an act of domestic terrorism,” stating that the agent fired in self-defense as Good “weaponized her vehicle” to run him over. Conversely, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, after viewing the same footage, called the official narrative “bullshit,” asserting the agent had “recklessly” used his power.

This battle of perceptions is fought not with facts, but pre-existing political ideologies. This case serves as warning message for leaders in every sector: the foundational principles of crisis management can break down under the pressure of political polarization.

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Crisis management has been guided by foundational frameworks for decades. Steven Fink, a pioneer in the field, taught us that in the “battle between perception and reality, perception always wins.” His work, along with that of scholars such as Timothy Coombs, who developed the Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT), provided a playbook for leaders. One built on the critical assumption that the primary goal of crisis communication is to bring public perception closer to a shared, objective reality.

But what happens when there is no shared reality? When the public is no longer a single entity, but a collection of fiercely divided groups, each with its own set of facts?

Communication As A Political Weapon

The Renee Nicole Good case shows that we are no longer in a battle between perception and reality, but a war of opposing politically charged perceptions. In this environment, communication is being used not to clarify but to confirm existing biases. To rally the base, not persuade the undecided. This is the core of what researchers call affective polarization, where political disagreement morphs into visceral, personal animosity.

As research on political behavior demonstrates, the mere act of identifying with a political party is sufficient to trigger emotional reactions – known as ‘hot cognition’ – that lead citizens to accept misinformation favoring their own party and reject true information that favors the opposition, regardless of the actual facts of the case.

This dangerous shift from fact-based discourse to ideological warfare is rapidly spilling over from the political arena to corporate crises, turning business leaders into unwitting combatants in a culture war.

Corporate Crises In The Crossfire

In the past, corporations could remain quite comfortably above the political fray. Now, however, they are the new nexus of political conflict. As government gridlock deepens, disillusioned citizens are increasingly looking at businesses to solve societal problems, pressuring them to take a stance on divisive issues.

Consider Disney’s experience in 2022. When then-CEO Bob Chapek initially avoided taking a public stance on Florida’s controversial “Don’t Say Gay” bill, he faced intense internal pressure. When he reversed course and criticized the bill, he ignited a political firestorm. The state of Florida retaliated by revoking Disney’s 55-year-old special tax district, sparking a protracted legal battle that contributed to Chapek’s ouster.

Similarly, Bud Light’s 2023 promotional campaign with a transgender influencer led to a conservative backlash and a staggering 30% drop in sales. These are not isolated incidents. BlackRock, Target, and Coca-Cola have all been pulled into similar controversies, demonstrating that even the most established brands are not immune.

In the current environment, any corporate crisis, no matter how operational or apolitical it may seem, can be instantly hijacked and weaponized by political actors. But the threat extends beyond the company’s actions and into the personal lives of its leaders.

Personal Is Now Political

The intense scrutiny of a leader’s personal life is another issue to contend with. A crisis doesn’t stop at the company’s balance sheet or operational failures. It extends to the CEO’s voting record, their family history, their personal donations, and their social media footprint. This politicizes the individual, making them a proxy for a set of beliefs that can be attacked to further a narrative. It distracts from the substantive issues of the crisis and forces the leader to fight a two-front war: one for their company’s reputation and another for their own.

While the Astronomer CEO’s “kiss cam” scandal in 2025 was not overtly political, it serves as a potent example of this phenomenon. A personal moment, captured on camera and amplified by social media, spiraled into a full-blown corporate crisis. The CEO’s personal life, marriage, and judgment were dissected online, completely derailing the conversation from his leadership of the company. It’s important to separate the individual from the brand when a CEO faces personal controversy; however, as hyperpolarization intensifies, that separation is becoming impossible.

This trend poses an existential threat to effective leadership. When leaders are consumed with defending their personal character against politically motivated attacks, their ability to manage the actual crisis, make sound operational decisions, communicate with stakeholders, and lead their teams is severely compromised.

Leaders cannot afford to pretend they are operating in the world of ten or even five years ago. Polarization has raised the demands of leadership. The traditional playbook assumes that facts can realign perception, but that assumption no longer holds. A new focus on resilience, strategic foresight, and a clear-eyed understanding of polarization is required.

The 3 Rules of Leadership in a Polarized Crisis

1. Assume Every Crisis Will Become Political

The first mistake leaders make is treating polarization as a situational risk rather than a permanent condition. No crisis remains purely operational for long. A safety failure, data breach, marketing decision, or personal controversy can be quickly reframed as ideological evidence and weaponized by political actors. Meaning is assigned before facts are settled. Thus, leaders must build political risk analysis into all crisis planning. The relevant question is no longer “Is this political?” but “How can this be politicized, and by whom?”

2. Prioritize Credibility Over Persuasion

In a polarized crisis, persuasion is largely unattainable. Credibility is not. Many audiences are no longer listening to be convinced, but to confirm existing beliefs. Efforts to appease all sides often appear evasive or incoherent. The leader’s task shifts from winning consensus to maintaining trust with those who still matter most: employees, regulators, investors, and partners. Consistency between values and actions, disciplined language, and an acceptance that some backlash is inevitable are now core leadership competencies.

3. Prevent the Leader From Becoming the Crisis

Hyperpolarization collapses the boundary between organization and individual. Leaders are increasingly treated as symbols, with their personal lives, histories, and beliefs folded into the crisis narrative. When the leader becomes the story, operational response suffers. Thus, crisis preparedness must include plans for personal scrutiny, clear delegation when necessary, and governance structures that protect institutional credibility. Leaders who attempt to defend themselves while managing the crisis often fail at both.

An Unavoidable Challenge

The weaponization of crisis communication represents a fundamental and dangerous shift in our public discourse. The Renee Nicole Good tragedy is a reminder that when we stop talking to each other and start talking past each other, the consequences can be devastating. For business leaders, the message is clear: you are on the battlefield, whether you want to be or not. The line between a corporate misstep and a national political firestorm has been erased. Preparing for this new reality is a critical challenge for leadership in 2026.

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That’s what ICE agent Jonathon Ross said on camera moments after fatally shooting Renée Nicole Good in her car in Minneapolis this week. We know this because it was captured in the released footage from Ross’s cellphone, showing how the events unfolded from his vantage point.

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Per one narrative, that video, like the others taken from different perspectives that are widely circulating on social media, especially X, shows Good quickly turning to the right to drive away from the masked ICE agents demanding she get out of the car. She momentarily backs up to create space to turn and then quickly pulls her wheels to the right, away from the agents, in what looks like an attempt to get around them and leave.

Then, there’s another narrative. One that says Good drove her car at Ross, intending to run him over.

The video from Ross’s cellphone camera, in particular, is being shared as an example that supports this second narrative. That it shows Good driving the car at him and striking him.

I can see how it could be interpreted that way. The audio from Ross’s video as the car begins to move to the right could be interpreted as the sound of a car hitting a person. But if you listen to that exact moment in the rear-angle audio, it aligns with the first gunshot sound. Here are the two videos side by side, with the audio from Ross’s footage (A) in the first clip and the audio from the other video (B) in the second.

Same videos being watched. Wildly different conclusions being drawn. Both simultaneously backed up by opposing political narratives. Within hours, the same footage was being used to justify two incompatible stories. One official, one local.

“It was an act of domestic terrorism,” said US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, “An officer of ours acted quickly and defensively shot to protect himself and the people around him.” Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey was quick to counter this narrative: “They are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defense. Having seen the video of myself, I want to tell everybody directly that is bullshit.” In his press statement, he said of ICE:

And this is the problem with reality.

As Steven Fink writes in Crisis Communications: The Definitive Guide to Managing the Message, “when there is a difference between perception and reality, perception always wins”.

The different narratives in response to this video were established long before the tragic events occurred. The ideas of who is ‘bad’ and who is ‘good’ on both sides have developed gradually as the political divide in the US has widened over the past several years. Those narratives themselves feed into how different people can watch the same videos and perceive different versions of events. It’s not really seeing is believing… more what we believe is what we see.

It’s no coincidence that philosophy has never managed to come to a definitive agreement on what truth and knowledge actually are. Knowledge has been defined as a “justified true belief,” but beliefs can be justified and true without knowledge. Reliability conditions, causal connections to facts, and appeals to intellectual virtues have been explored as alternatives; there is no consensus. Same with truth. Is it agreement between a belief and objective reality? Coherence within a belief system? Is it whatever proves useful in practice? A linguistic shortcut? Is it inseparable from power and narrative control? Nobody knows. How can we, if we don’t know what knowing is… Enough of that. I’m not trying to get into overwrought philosophical commentary here. In practice, most of us live as if confidence equals knowledge and then interpret everything through it.

What I really want to highlight is that we often aren’t living in reality, but in perception.

Whether something is objectively true often matters less than what people believe to be true when they act. What matters a lot is that we are often living in situations where we think we know something and then use that information to filter reality through the perceptions of truth that that knowledge we (think we) have creates.

What matters most is what links all of these things together. Communication. Narratives. How information is shared.

Let’s say you trust me completely and I tell you, convincingly and with urgency, that something is dangerous. You believe me. You’re going to think it’s dangerous. You know it’s dangerous. So when you encounter that thing, you want to get away from it. Stop it. Warn other people about it. Make sure it can’t hurt you or others. And you see this as the right thing to do… because how could it be wrong to protect yourself and others against this dangerous thing?

But what if it isn’t dangerous. What if I have a reason to make you think it is because you acting on your fear, your survival instinct, your protective nature… serves me somehow. Gets me elected. Makes me money. Protects me. Elevates me above my competitors. Gives me credibility. Establishes a shared enemy that I need us to have to instigate a fight. Isolates you from other, more accurate perspectives to lend plausibility to mine.

I could go on. There’s a great number of reasons people will lie to you to make you think you know something is true… when what they’re actually getting you to do is believe their perceptions. (Note: They may do this entirely unintentionally.)

Communication in a crisis, as Steven Fink notes, goes a long way toward bringing perception in alignment with reality. That’s when it’s being used responsibly and as intended. But where there are proper ways to use a tool, there are always improper ways too. A hammer can knock a person out just as effectively as it can put a nail in a wall. Communication can align perception with whatever version of reality the communicator wants their audience to hold onto.

And this is what I’m thinking about when I watch the videos of the tragic shooting of Renée Nicole Good and the conflicting narratives surrounding it.

My perception is that the primary underlying issue is being lost in the back-and-forth over what Good was doing there and why, what she did or didn’t do with her car, what Ross should have done and why, who is at fault and why…

If you already believe cars are commonly used as weapons against officers, you’ll see a threat. If you already believe ICE escalates encounters, you’ll see an unnecessary killing.

I think it’s likely that the truth is a combination of both narratives. That Good didn’t try to run Ross over, but Ross thought she was going to. What I’d like to know is (a) why Ross perceived her as a threat and (b) why the response to that threat was to kill. Because I, perhaps naïvely, don’t believe that Ross is just inherently wired to kill a person in a car and call her a f***ing bitch as she dies. Perhaps this is because I don’t want to believe that people like that exist just out of nature. I don’t want to believe that there are people who are simply OK with hurting others and not giving a shit about it for no reason. But really, I think people who act this way are molded to do so. Conditioned by being told something is dangerous when it’s not.

What I want to know is what is going on in ICE training facilities that made Ross perceive that car as a lethal threat.

What are they being told?

That narrative that Noem came out with about people using cars as weapons and domestic terrorism… is that being taught to ICE agents?

Are they being told that protesters in cars are going to try to run them over? Are they being conditioned to believe that political opponents are not humans with differences of opinion but something along the lines of enemies in war? And are they being presented with this information within a perception that they are protecting their country by responding to manufactured threats with lethal force?

What are the narratives forming the perceptions they are bringing to their work?

Why are these narratives being used?

I find it hard to believe that shooting to kill is anyone’s natural response in a fast-moving situation where nothing is particularly clear. That it’s the natural response to a moving car versus getting out of the way. To me, it appears to be a fear response elicited by narratives that position political differences as threats to life, and if those narratives continue, more situations like this one will arise. Whether this comes from training, culture, policy, media ecosystems, or some mix of all four… I don’t know.

I don’t know what Ross was trained to do in this situation. I don’t know what guidance he received, what protocols apply, or what was emphasized in his preparation. It’s possible that this was a panicked, isolated failure rather than the product of systemic conditioning. I’m raising these questions not because I have answers, but because they feel like the only questions worth asking if we want fewer people to die.

I’m writing this because I want you to think about where your perceptions come from. Be more aware of where they come from.

If you’re seeing a video of an event and coming to conclusions about what it shows that differ from the conclusions another group is coming to, ask yourself what your perceptions are rooted in. Where your biases might be. What narratives have fed into these biases? How might you see the situation if you believed the other side’s narrative? Which of your beliefs, interpretations, and truths are yours… and which came from other people? What motivations might they have had to share those with you? If the things they said came from someone you don’t like or agree with, would they be as credible to you? If not, why are they when they come from someone you do like and agree with (on other issues)?

If you’re told a group of people is bad or dangerous, does the reasoning behind that stand up to scrutiny? Are the feelings you’re being told to have toward this group rational? Would you have them if you hadn’t been fed the narrative you’re using to justify your beliefs about them?

The problem with reality is that we often don’t even see it.

You have the power to choose the narratives that shape your perception of reality and, consequently, how you show up in the world.

Do yourself a favor and apply some discernment.

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However, as online posts have a tendency to do, it circulates beyond that small circle and ends up on the screen of another meeting attendee. She shares it with the colleague sitting next to her. And he shares it with the next… Suddenly, everyone in attendance has seen it. One colleague, feeling alarmed and perhaps offended by the implication in the message, prints the post off and sends it to the poster’s boss with a note expressing concern that their team member is making violent threats against the team.

The poster is now facing a formal complaint. They think it’s ridiculous. It is obviously not a serious threat, and it was never intended to be seen by anyone else in the group. Their immediate reaction to the complaint might be to defend against the most serious accusation, that they are a physical threat… but is that the primary concern here?

Beyond the joke

The underlying message our poster’s colleagues received has very little to do with the fear of being impaled with a straw (though they should perhaps take a cup with an alternative lid to future meetings, just in case). It’s also unlikely that any of their colleagues genuinely believes this person to be a physical threat. The post itself is easily dismissed as hyperbole and not literal. The sentiment behind it, though? That creates a more of a lasting impression. What “If I have to spend one more minute in this meeting, I’m going to impale everyone with a straw” is really saying (whether intentionally or not) is:

• I’m not invested. The post is a clear indicator of disinterest. It tells the team, “I don’t want to be here.” This is a damning admission in a professional environment (yes, even if most of the people in the room don’t actually want to be there).

• I don’t consider myself part of the team. The post creates an implicit “us vs. them” dynamic, with the poster positioning themselves outside of and against the group. It undermines the sense of shared purpose and mutual respect that groups typically expect.

• I don’t respect you. The post publicly signals that the poster believes their own time is more valuable than that of their colleagues and their institution.

This is the reputational crisis.

Reputation is currency and the foundation upon which professional trust is built. Our poster might think it ridiculous, again, that their colleagues would form a negative opinion of them according to this one throwaway online comment, but while reputations are built through consistent, positive actions over many years, a single misstep (especially an online one, given how quickly posts get spread around and the lack of control we have regarding where they end up) can jeopardize them instantly. The issue is not the potential for straw-related violence but being seen as a disengaged and adversarial colleague. If not addressed, perceptions like this can ‘stick’ long-term and create barriers to collaboration and trust.

Three common mistakes

It’s human nature to get defensive when something we’ve said gets blown out of proportion and taken out of context. However, giving in to that defensiveness and using it as a strategy to ‘fix’ the situation… won’t produce the desired effect (unless you want to dig a deeper hole, in which case this article might not be for you). There are three common mistakes that people make in situations like this. Understanding what they are can help you avoid them if you end up with a similar issue.

• Focusing on the wrong issue. In this case, the poster’s immediate defense might be to address the alarming accusation and to rush to reassure everyone that the post was a joke, they’re not going to stab anyone with a straw. This clarification is necessary. However! Focusing on it as the primary issue is a critical error because doing so is essentially responding to the symptom, not the disease. Focusing on the literal meaning of the words misses the opportunity to address the underlying perceptions of disrespect and disengagement that are causing the real harm. The colleagues are not worried about straws; they’re concerned about the poster’s attitude toward them and their shared work. A defense that ignores this fundamental concern will be perceived as obtuse at best, and dismissive at worst.

• Shifting the blame. The poster will likely be tempted to blame their colleagues for their negative perception. This is an extremely common reaction (and understandable, from a human nature perspective—you’re not wrong to feel defensive in this way, it’s just rarely productive). The poster might be thinking, “I’m a great colleague, I always help out, and now they think I’m a terrible person because of one stupid post? That’s their fault for misinterpreting me!” And listen, I get it… as someone who has been misinterpreted (haven’t we all?), I get the unfairness of it all. But showing this sentiment is a little bit like gaslighting as its telling the affected parties that their feelings are invalid, and nobody enjoys being gaslit. It won’t rebuild trust. The reality is that, regardless of intent, fairness, or the accuracy of the perception, the poster’s action caused their colleagues’ negative feelings. Regardless of past behavior, the post created a new negative context through which other actions may be viewed. Shifting the blame is a defensive posture that prevents the poster from taking ownership of the situation, which is an absolute prerequisite for rebuilding trust.

• Focusing on shared sentiment. The poster may be thinking, “But half the people in that room were bored out of their minds! I just said what everyone was thinking!” However, there’s a massive difference between thinking something and saying it publicly. There’s even a massive difference between saying something to one trusted colleague and saying it publicly. Social contracts in the workplace (no matter how much we may dislike them) often require us to maintain a public display of engagedness (is that a word? Perhaps not, but it’s clear enough, so IDC). Violating that contract makes you appear untrustworthy (yes, even if it’s your authentic and transparent view…). Even if a colleague in the room shared the poster’s sentiment, being confronted with it publicly is a different experience. If the poster shared an “I hate this group” message with their colleague directly in a 1-1 private message, it would come with an implicit “but not you” meaning; a shared understanding that the frustration is with the meeting, and not the recipient of the message. A public post lacks this nuance entirely. Trusted colleagues who might have shared the poster’s sentiment are now left wondering, “Do they dislike me, too?”

A note on viral risk

The scenario above was contained within a single department (though it could be considered to have ‘gone viral’ within it). It is not a hypothetical situation. Although I have changed the details substantially and can’t share the ‘real’ ones, I can share that because of the nature of the institution and individuals involved, if it had ended up on a platform like X in the current political climate, it could easily have resulted in the poster being doxxed and their institution being dragged through a mess of a ‘court of public opinion’ with everything taken out of context and a complete loss of narrative control. The poster would have faced a mob of strangers pulling apart their character and professional history, and the institution might have been pressured to act, with negative consequences for the poster’s career. These situations can have very real consequences, such as permanent digital footprints and employment termination. A thoughtful and strategic response is even more important in an internet outrage situation.

The fix

Repairing your reputation after doing something that damages others’ trust in you (whether you perceive that damage to be fair or not) is not a quick or easy process. It requires accountability, awareness, and a demonstrated, long-term commitment to addressing the negative perceptions and showing that they don’t really apply to you. It takes more than words. Actions are needed as well. But the right words are a great starting point. So what could our poster do here?

• Fully assess the situation. Addressing the underlying implications of their post and the perceptions their colleagues have as a result of it requires awareness of what those perceptions are. If you’re in a situation where you’ve been accused of something or something you’ve said has been taken out of context, it’s important to take a step back and look beyond your own perception to understand what others might be thinking and why.

• Take accountability. The first and most critical step is to offer a sincere, unqualified apology to their boss and those present at the meeting. No excuses, justifications, or phrases like “I’m sorry if you were offended” or “I’m sorry, but I was just frustrated” (those are shifting blame). A true apology takes full ownership: “I am deeply sorry for the message I posted during the meeting. It was unprofessional, disrespectful, and a serious lapse in judgment. There is no excuse for my behavior.”

• Acknowledge the impact. After owning the action, the poster must demonstrate understanding of the real harm they caused. This is where they move beyond the literal threat and address the underlying issues of respect and engagement. The apology should continue with something like: “I understand that my post was a sign of disrespect to all of you and to the work we are doing together. It sent the message that I don’t value your time, that I’m not engaged in my role, and that I don’t want to be part of this team. I want to assure you that this is not the case. I am committed to my job, and I have a great deal of respect for all of you as my colleagues.” This provides important validation of the colleagues’ feelings and shows that the poster has the self-awareness to understand the true nature of their mistake. [Note: Many people have a strong negative reaction to having to do this type of thing… you may feel like you’re taking responsibility for things that aren’t your fault, that you’re making yourself look bad to appease others, that it’s unfair, annoying etc… Those feelings are normal, and it’s important to work through them to produce an authentic response.]

• Recommit and demonstrate change. As I said above, words aren’t enough. The final step is to consistently demonstrate the qualities that the post called into question. The poster must make a conscious, visible effort to be more engaged, more respectful, and more committed. This means putting the phone away during meetings, asking thoughtful questions, actively participating in discussions, offering to help colleagues, and generally projecting an attitude of positivity and collaboration. Not being fake, but making a genuine effort to live up to the professional standards that were perceived to be violated. Over time, these consistent actions will speak louder than the single, foolish post. They will form a new body of evidence that will gradually overwrite the negative impression and rebuild the foundation of trust.

The takeaway

Our words can have unexpected and unintended consequences, and the most significant impact of a misstep may not always be the most obvious one. Understanding the true nature of reputational damage, avoiding the common pitfalls of a defensive response, and following a disciplined path of ownership, acknowledgment, and demonstrated change can recover your reputation, even when you make a serious professional mistake. It’s not easy, and it humility and perseverance… but if you’re willing to do the work, you can repair your reputation and gain a deeper understanding of how you might come across to help you avoid similar problems in the future.

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A traditional PR playbook is not enough for academics facing allegations of research misconduct, financial impropriety, ethical lapses etc. Strategies designed for public consumption don’t address the unique dynamics of the academic setting… but they can be adapted to guide effective communication with colleagues and institutions that will help protect your career when you’re caught up in a mistake that nobody wants to make.

Why academic reputation crises are different

Corporate crises often fade with the next news cycle. The public loses interest. Academics don’t. Academic circles are small, tight-knit communities, and everyone knows everyone; reputation is the primary currency, and the information that shapes it is often shared informally or… as an ‘entertaining’ piece of gossip. As an undergrad, I took a class that, >10 years earlier, had been taught by a professor who was convicted of trying to murder his wife (and was later employed as an ethics tutor). This is the only thing I remember about that class.

The characteristics of academic crises are important to address when considering how to approach them:

• Criticism in academia spreads through informal networks, making it harder to track and counter (but no less damaging) than a public news story

• Academics are trained critical thinkers who value evidence, integrity, and authenticity above all else, so a corporate-style apology will likely fail and be met with derision, further damaging credibility

• The affected individual is often left to deal with the issue on their own (the efficacy of university comms departments is a subject for another post); their relationship with their institution is paramount, and support (or lack thereof) from a department chair or dean can make or break their career

Situational Crisis Communication Theory in academic settings

Coombs’ Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) provides a framework for understanding and responding to crises, indicating that the most effective response depends on the nature of the crisis and the degree of responsibility attributed to the organization. Coombs divides crises into the victim, accidental, and preventable/intentional clusters, with reputational repair strategies categorized into denial, diminishment, rebuilding, and bolstering. Denial and evasion are almost always losing strategies in academia. The community values honesty and accountability, and attempts to shift blame or deny responsibility, especially in the face of evidence, will only destroy credibility further.

Here are some examples and recommended responses (these are all situations I have encountered in my work helping academics with reputational issues):

Crisis cluster: Victim (you are a victim of external factors)

• Situation: You are falsely accused of plagiarism.

• Recommended response: Expression of complete transparency. Acknowledge the importance of integrity and indicate that you welcome a thorough investigation into the issue. Cooperate fully with it. Be prepared to address any unexpected findings. Taking a complete denial approach and acting defensively when investigated, even when you have nothing to hide, creates a negative impression (yes, I know that is unfair). It also makes you appear to have been hiding something if the investigation reveals incidental errors in your process, such as misattributed sources or citation mistakes. This often occurs in plagiarism cases because, when someone is actively looking for an issue, common mistakes that go unnoticed throughout the peer review process are identified. If you are transparent and a willing participant of investigations, your response to incidental errors will be easier, and your explanations for the errors will be perceived as more credible.

Crisis cluster: Accidental (you unknowingly made a mistake)

• Situation: An honest error in data analysis is discovered in one of your published papers.

• Recommended response: Explanation and corrective action. Acknowledge the mistake, explain how it happened, and take immediate steps to correct it. This will be the topic of a wider op-ed that I’m writing for publication elsewhere, but I recently spoke with scientific integrity expert Dr. Elisabeth Bik on this issue, and she noted that the response of a researcher whose papers are flagged on sites like PubPeer often determine the trajectory of their reputation far more than the original concern itself, with common mistakes including complete silence, which is mistake because it’s a missed opportunity to address the issue and leaves the narrative entirely in the hands of others. Other mistakes include attacking the messenger’s credentials or motives, which is the worst possible move as it signals panic and invites deeper scrutiny. Dr. Bik also noted that researchers sometimes respond with a “Gish gallop” of technical jargon and irrelevant data, making them appear evasive and defensive while also completely failing to address the core issue. The best response, according to Dr. Bik? “This is quite serious; we’re going to look into this.” That response makes her “trust that the author is really going to look into it… even if they don’t mean it.“

Crisis cluster: Preventable/Intentional (negligence or misconduct)

• Situation: You have been found to have misused grant funds.

• Recommended response: Apology and institutional engagement. Take full responsibility even if this was negligence and you didn’t do it intentionally. Apologize sincerely and work with the institution on a plan for corrective action. Forceful denial when there is evidence that you did do something, even if you didn’t know you were doing it, will read badly and intensify the reputational damage. It’s not a viable option. The issue might be an integrity violation if it was intentional, or a competence violation if it was not. People are generally more forgiving of competence errors than of integrity failures, but only if you express responsibility and accept that the mistake occurred. You can (and should) explain how the mistake happened and what you will do moving forward to ensure that it doesn’t happen again, but this must be done after an acceptance of responsibility and acknowledgement of the effects of the mistake on the affected stakeholders (more on this in the next section). It should also be framed as learning and reflection, not an attempt to shift blame. Admitting fault is not a weakness and it can go a long way toward neutralizing hostility toward you.

Who are your stakeholders?

Stakeholders in corporate crises are often faceless groups (customers, investors, the media etc). In an academic crisis, most of your stakeholders are people you know personally… this makes the communication process more complex. An academic’s stakeholder network includes:

• Department Chairs/Deans: Your most important ally… or adversary. Their support is crucial for navigating the institutional process.

• Colleagues in Your Field: These are the people who will review your papers, invite you to speak at conferences, and collaborate on future projects. Their opinion of you matters.

• Collaborators and Co-authors: They have a vested interest in the outcome of the crisis and can either be powerful advocates or damaging critics.

• Funding Bodies: These organizations are risk-averse. Any hint of misconduct can lead to the immediate withdrawal of funding and a permanent black mark against your name.

• Institutional Leadership: The provost and president will ultimately decide the fate of your career at the institution. Their primary concern is protecting the university’s reputation.

• Students and Mentees: Their trust in you as a mentor and teacher is at stake, but that is not the only consideration. Students and mentees share their experiences and opinions with others, and they may be talking about your crisis with people who know you without your knowledge.

Rumors spread quickly in academic networks, so speed and authenticity in communication are critical. You must get ahead of the narrative and communicate directly with your key stakeholders before they hear it from someone else. For example, you probably don’t want your student panic-calling your department chair before you’ve had a chance to discuss anything properly with anyone. That’s not how good narrative control begins… Identify your stakeholders, plan how you will address the issue with them, and do it quickly in order of importance.

A 5-step approach

If you find yourself in the midst of a reputation crisis, you can always contact me… or, you could try this 5-step guide.

Step 1: Assess the crisis type

Be completely honest with yourself. Are you a victim? Or did you make a mistake? Is this an accidental crisis or a preventable one? Is it an integrity issue or a competence issue? Your answer to this question will determine your entire strategy. Misclassifying your crisis and claiming to be a victim when you are at fault is a critical error.

Step 2: Immediately secure institutional alignment

Schedule a meeting with your department chair or dean BEFORE the rumor mill starts. Be transparent about the situation, explain the facts, and outline your proposed response strategy. Ask for their support. Institutions are far more likely to protect their own when they are brought into the loop early. If you try to hide the crisis, they will distance themselves to protect the university, leaving you to fend for yourself. [Note: This does not apply if you have an existing challenging relationship with these individuals. A much more nuanced approach is needed in such situations, which is beyond the scope of this particular framework.]

Step 3: Communicate with your inner circle

Identify three to five trusted colleagues, collaborators, or mentors. Contact them directly, preferably in person, and explain the situation. Provide them with the facts and ask for their support. These individuals will become your advocates in the informal networks, helping to counter rumors and control the narrative.

Step 4: Prepare your official response

Your response should be tailored to your crisis type. If you are a victim, express confidence in the facts and welcome a thorough investigation. If it was an accident, take responsibility and detail the corrective actions you are taking. If it was preventable negligence (or an intentional act), acknowledge the failure, take full accountability, and express a genuine commitment to change. Avoid defensive and legalistic language. Speak in your authentic voice. If you don’t know all the facts, don’t fill in the gaps with assumptions and make it seem like you do know. Do not say anything that could be interpreted as a denial of a fact that is later demonstrated to be true via an investigation, etc.

Step 5: Maintain transparency throughout the investigation

Don’t disappear and go silent. Provide regular, factual updates to your key stakeholders. Acknowledge uncertainty where it exists, and demonstrate that you are actively engaged in the process and committed to a fair resolution. Use consistent communication channels to ensure that everyone receives the same information simultaneously.

What NOT to do

Knowing what not to do is just as important as knowing what to do, and we’ve covered some aspects of this above, but of course, there are more…

• Don’t hide: Human instinct is to retreat and hope the problem goes away. It won’t. The informal networks in academia are incredibly efficient at spreading information… and misinformation. If you don’t provide the facts, the rumor mill will invent its own, and they will invariably be more damaging than the reality. Information vacuums are filled with speculation. That speculation could cast you as the villain.

• Don’t deny the undeniable: Academia is built on a foundation of evidence. If there are facts, emails, or data that contradict your claims of innocence, a denial strategy will not only fail but will permanently brand you as dishonest. It will be seen as a betrayal of core values. It is far better to own a mistake than to be caught in a lie.

• Don’t blame others: It may be tempting to point the finger at a disgruntled student, a rival lab, or a flawed institutional process, but blaming others is often interpreted as both a sign of weakness and a refusal to take responsibility. Even if others share some of (OR ALL) of the blame, your focus must be on your own accountability. Of course don’t take responsibility for something that you didn’t do, but you can still take responsibility for the investigation process. Express concern that the issue has been raised and trust in the investigation to uncover the cause. Let the investigation exonerate you instead of shifting the blame yourself.

• Don’t go silent: Silence is not neutrality; it is a vacuum. It allows others to control the narrative and is almost always interpreted as an admission of guilt. Provide factual updates to your stakeholders, even if it’s just “The investigation is ongoing, and I remain committed to a fair and transparent process.” [Note: You might be told that you’re not allowed to discuss the issue as the investigation is done. This doesn’t mean you can’t share the above update or that you can’t acknowledge it at all. Just don’t go into any details that you’ve been told not to mention.]

• Don’t rely on institutional PR: Your university’s communications office has one primary client: the university. Their goal is to protect the institution’s reputation, not yours. While you should align your messaging with the institution, you cannot outsource your voice. You must be an active participant in your own defense, speaking in your own authentic voice.

• Don’t assume it will blow over: The academic community has a long and unfortunately unforgiving memory. A crisis that is not managed effectively can follow you for the rest of your career. It can surface in tenure reviews, grant applications, and collaboration requests for years to come. You must be proactive and strategic in your response. Expect that it will be brought up. When you’re prepared to discuss a difficult topic in advance, you’re less likely to misspeak.

Examples:

Scenario 1: You are falsely accused of research misconduct. This is a victim cluster crisis. Immediately inform your department chair, welcome a full investigation, and provide all evidence of your proper methodology. Your transparency and cooperation will be your greatest assets.

Scenario 2: You discover a data entry error in one of your published papers. This is an accidental cluster crisis. Do not wait for someone else to find it. Immediately contact the journal, acknowledge the error, and submit a correction or request a retraction. Explain the safeguards you have put in place to prevent future errors. Your proactivity will limit the reputational damage.

Scenario 3: You are accused of misusing grant funds. ◦ This is a preventable cluster crisis. Take full accountability. Do not make excuses. Work with your institution to understand the extent of the problem and develop a plan for restitution and corrective action. Genuine remorse and a commitment to correction and changed approaches are your path to potential career recovery.

Should you do this alone?

The unique blend of academic culture, institutional politics, and high-stakes communication requires specialized expertise beyond either traditional public relations or academic processes. Knowing how academia works may be insufficient for your response to land the way you want it to. Working with an expert who understands the specific anatomy of academia and crises can help you understand the unwritten rules, values, and expectations of the academic community in the context of reputation management.

And they can do it quickly.

The single most important factor to consider when deciding whether to approach an issue yourself or bring in a consultant like me (or contact an organization like Faculty First Responders) is time.

The longer it takes to address a reputation-damaging issue, the more damage is done, and the harder it is to recover. Early, strategic intervention is a critical factor in determining the outcome. Would doing it yourself take you too long? Then it’s time to get help.

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“My PhD supervisor hasn’t emailed me back in 10 weeks…. Now I find out he’s stolen my paper. He published my work in his name, and I don’t know what to do. My email from 10 weeks ago was my draft. I needed feedback for it. Now I find out he’s taken it and published it. I’ve heard of being scooped by other academics, but not outright stealing. But I literally have proof that it’s mine. So joke’s on him.”

The comments section?

“You need to report to the university president, the dean, and school/department.”

“This needs to go viral. Lawyer up and write to the journal with proof.”

“Sue him in court for intellectual property theft. Easy win if you have the receipts.”

“Contact the publisher and inform them it’s stolen - they have a process to remove his credit and put yours on… and to have all his other work questioned.”

The problem:

Nobody stole shit. The story continued as follows:

“All my lit review papers are here in this massive library, and they’re all organized into folders where, by the way, I read them all side by side. All my papers. I literally didn’t know when he’d get back to me, so I asked the chat for feedback. I even wrote my paper in the same website [shown in the video], and look here, are my citations…”

After the first version of this story popped up on my TikTok ‘for you’ page, I started seeing more. At least 10 of them. Then, another creator’s video popped up where she’d collected even more, all beginning with the exact same line. These grad student creators were following a script. They had all been paid to share this story to promote a website.

That website? Anara, which I’ve written about before in the context of how this AI company’s marketing approaches promote bad research practices.

Promoting false allegations as a marketing tactic is worse.

Many of Anara’s social media partners are not real grad students, even though they pretend to be in their videos. However, there are several who are, and as one commenter mentioned on my video on this topic, they were able to find the person’s research page with their supervisor’s name on it in under 10 minutes. Given the outrage in the comments of the ‘stolen paper’ videos, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that someone might do a little digging, find the student’s university, and report the supervisor for ‘stealing research’.

The first university misconduct case I helped someone with was a malicious complaint. Resolving it took almost a year and cost thousands in legal fees. It likely wouldn’t take a professor that long to prove that they hadn’t stolen their student’s research, but being on the receiving end of false accusations does carry a risk of reputational damage. Perception can trump reality in the court of public opinion, and the digital footprint of these allegations could linger long after the university clears the supervisor’s name.

But it’s not really the supervisor’s reputation that’s on the line here.

It’s the student’s.

Here’s a snippet of the University of Nottingham’s code of conduct:

If an investigation under this code concludes that an individual has made false allegations which are frivolous, vexatious or malicious and not in the public interest, the individual concerned may be subject to disciplinary action/s.

This is pretty standard language in a university code of conduct, and “I was paid by a company to say these things to promote a product” isn’t a great defense. It’s certainly not in the public interest to make false allegations on a public platform, especially when your institution can easily be found and linked to what you’re saying.

Trust me when I say you don’t want to get a reputation for being untrustworthy in grad school. Not only are the Anara ads these creators post unethical in terms of false allegations, they are also undisclosed as ads. They’re posted as regular content, and if someone doesn’t visit the creator’s profile and notice that every single video is an undisclosed Anara ad, it’s not obvious that the story isn’t genuine. That’s two actions that show a person can’t be trusted.

The last time I posted about Anara, a creator (who shall remain nameless) reached out to me to share what Anara is offering grad students to create a new page filled with undisclosed, unethical ads: $25 per video, up to 10 videos per week. Up to $13,000/year in additional income is going to be attractive to almost any grad student…

But it’s not going to be enough to live on if you get removed from your program for participating in unethical practices. It’s definitely not enough to compensate for a destroyed reputation. It might sound unfair, but if you’re seen making these videos, a future employer might wonder what else you’re willing to do for some extra cash. They might question your judgement. If it’s between you and another candidate who is just as good as you but hasn’t been posting questionable ads all over the socials…guess who will get the position?

I’m saying all that as though I blame these grad students entirely for taking money from Anara to make these ads. I don’t. I get it. Grad students aren’t often allowed to have second jobs, and it doesn’t take a whole lot of time to film 10 scripted videos a week. I can see how the money is a motivator. I’m mainly sharing this in the hopes that grad students tempted by the offer might think twice and consider whether it’s worth it to them to trade their trustworthiness for that extra cash. Because Anara is the real issue here.

Anara is paying students to compromise their reputations online, exploiting the fact that they need money, all while promoting bad research practices and unethical behavior. This should not be legal! In fact, undisclosed advertising is illegal, at least in the US and the UK.

If you’re creating content for an online audience, whenever you’ve been incentivised to post, it must be clearly labelled as an advert or ad, and be based on your genuine experience.

It’s also getting Anara a pretty bad reputation online. One I wouldn’t want to have it were my startup.

If I were advising Anara’s team (feel free to reach out to me, Anara, if you’d like to explore how to advertise your product without destroying your own reputation), I’d suggest stopping all of the undisclosed ads and throwing every single existing script on the nearest fire… and then publicly acknowledging the unethical nature of the recent marketing tactics with a sincere apology to the academic community, including the students and supervisors who were potentially harmed, misinformed, and exploited. I’d suggest developing high-quality content instead of relying on viral outrage marketing and establishing fully transparent collaborations with clear, upfront disclosure of the partnership. I’d help Anara develop and publicly share a comprehensive set of ethical marketing guidelines and a plan to support the students who participated in the previous campaigns, including resources to help them navigate potential disciplinary action from their universities and mitigate damage to their academic reputations. That might help rebuild some of the trust and make the company viable in the future.

Your move, Anara…

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