Media Analysis Episodes

Justin Baldoni hadn't said a public word in almost two years. Then last week he propped up a phone, sat down next to his wife Emily, and posted a video to his own Instagram — no publicist, no People magazine. I told NBC News the most strategic thing about the video is how unstrategic it looked, and in this episode I show you the receipts. I walk through every move the way I teach my own clients: the owned-channel play (stop fighting Meta's algorithm — bring the crisis to your channel), the o...

Molly stood in the back of a Maine town hall, watching an oyster farmer from Sullivan hold a room with no notes, and texted her kids that they might be looking at the state's next senator. On Monday morning, her algorithm fed her story after story about the same man — now a loser, a liar, a warning. This episode lives in the space between those two feeds, because as Molly puts it in the first fifteen seconds: a crisis begins before the headlines. By the time the video goes viral, the conditions ...

This week the stories all share the same fingerprint: people who think the rules don't apply to them. Crisis-communications expert Molly McPherson breaks down why the Mike Vrabel–Dianna Russini saga still has legs months later (hint: it's not the affair — it's the contempt), how the New York Times investigation exposed a reporter who called the paper's own CEO to kill a story, and why the American Diabetes Association's apology is the rare crisis that actually got *better*. Plus: a Lego-store...

A New Jersey congressman has been missing for 77 days. His office keeps posting like he's at his desk. His father is fielding press calls. And almost no one is talking about it. Tom Kean Jr. hasn't cast a vote since March 5. His team's answer? "Personal medical issue." "Back soon." "Trust us." That's not transparency. That's a cover-up with better branding. This episode breaks down the four things Kean's team is doing wrong, why "simulated presence" on social media erodes trust faster than si...

When a celebrity files a lawsuit citing harassment and a hostile work environment, her PR team is supposed to make her the sympathetic figure. Blake Lively's team did the opposite. Everyone is covering the lawsuit. Molly is covering the PR collapse underneath it, and the numbers tell a story the legal coverage is missing entirely. We dissect: Why the "grab your friends, wear your florals" press tour was a five-alarm fire from week one How cross-promoting Betty Buzz during a domestic violence ...

What do a Patriots head coach, a country legend, and a Hollywood power couple have in common? They all just gave us a master class in what trust actually is. Or isn't. The thread connecting this week's stories is the difference between managing a message and actually meaning it. This week's roundup isn't about three scandals. It's about one question every leader eventually has to answer: Did you tell them the truth, or did you tell them what you thought would work? The cases: Mike Vrabel and t...

When a presidential interview goes off the rails, it is rarely an accident. It is a pattern. A man tried to kill the president on Saturday. By Tuesday, the dominant news story was a court filing about a ballroom. That is not a glitch in the news cycle. That is a Trap working exactly as designed. This week, I am introducing the fourth Trap in the Crisis Doctrine. The Deflection Trap. The four-move playbook leaders run when they cannot afford to answer the question they were asked. I pulled 8,7...

When a leader is under pressure, the first move tells you everything. Kash Patel sued The Atlantic for $275 million. Mike Vrabel called it a "private and personal matter." Both responses were designed to control the story. Both made it worse. This week on PR Breakdown, two leaders, two crises, one shared mistake. They tried to outrun trust instead of rebuilding it. Molly Breaks Down Why Kash Patel's $275 million lawsuit against The Atlantic is the loudest possible signal that the story landed ...

What actually breaks first in a scandal? Not the headline. Not the viral clip. Not the backlash. It's trust. In this episode, Molly McPherson breaks down three stories where trust was fractured long before the public ever reacted. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos keeps inserting himself into the news cycle while Nancy Guthrie is still missing. Oprah scores a viral interview with Kristin Cabot and misses the only question that matters. And ABC's The Bachelorette production collapses under the w...

Molly McPherson opens this episode not with a scandal, but with a pair of pants. It’s a disarming entry point into a much bigger question: what happens to trust when an expert starts to monetize? Drawing on her own decision to join the affiliate platform LTK as a mirror, Molly unpacks a real client crisis involving a content creator whose audience turned on them—not because of what they did, but because of what had quietly eroded. This episode introduces the Crisis Doctrine, Molly’s new framewor...

Episode Summary When Ryan Murphy's Love Story dropped in 2026, it didn't just revive a 25-year-old story; it rewrote the reputation of two women for a streaming audience of millions. Molly McPherson breaks down what the show got wrong, what the sourced record actually says, and why Daryl Hannah's New York Times op-ed was a textbook crisis communications move. This is a case study in narrative power, media accountability, and what it costs when the story gets told wrong the first time. What Yo...

Prince Andrew was arrested on his 66th birthday on suspicion of misconduct in public office. He was released hours later, but this investigation is far from over. Today I'm breaking down what actually happened, what it means legally, and what a decade of crisis avoidance looks like when it finally runs out of road. In this episode: What "released under investigation" means in the U.K. system and why it's not good news for Andrew The two separate police investigation tracks, including a 2010 W...

Thirteen days into a missing persons case that has captivated national media, the story isn't the search anymore—it's the searchers. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos has turned a crisis investigation into a reputational implosion, and former ABC News correspondent Clayton Sandell walks me through exactly how it happened. Guest: Clayton Sandell covered high-profile missing persons and mass casualty events for ABC News, including the Aurora theater shooting and numerous FBI-led investigations. H...

When law enforcement calls a press conference, they're supposed to provide clarity and control the narrative. Last week's Pima County Sheriff's press conference about missing 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie—mother of Today Show anchor Savannah Guthrie—did the opposite. I brought on Emmy-winning former network correspondent Clayton Sandell to break down what went wrong. He spoke with me during a live chat on Substack on February 6, 2026. Clayton spent 25+ years covering major breaking news for ABC a...

This week, Molly breaks down Peter Attia’s public response after his name appears more than 1,700 times in recently released Epstein-related documents. The documents include emails and calendar references tying Attia to Jeffrey Epstein over multiple years. While the files do not allege Attia participated in Epstein’s criminal sexual conduct, the relationship and tone of the correspondence raise serious questions about judgment, proximity to power, and credibility. Attia, a high-profile longevit...

When Renee Goode was killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, two completely different stories emerged from the same event. One side called her a domestic terrorist who weaponized her Honda Pilot, while the other saw a mother trying to escape. As a crisis manager from the Twin Cities, I break down the competing narratives from President Trump, JD Vance, Kristi Noem, Governor Tim Walz, and Mayor Jacob Frey to reveal the five hidden cues in any crisis communication: who gets humanized first, how the...

This week, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz abruptly ended his bid for a third term. This episode was recorded four days earlier during a live conversation and, in hindsight, it explains exactly why this outcome was almost inevitable. Amid a sprawling welfare fraud crisis that Republicans and former President Donald Trump turned into a national political flashpoint, the pressure escalated, division deepened, and Walz found himself trying to govern while defending his political future at the same tim...

This is the most downloaded episode of the year, resurfaced for the holiday week because the fallout is still unfolding in real time. Breaking down the Hollywood power struggle between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, with Ryan Reynolds playing a pivotal and controversial role, all sparked by a single voicemail that cracked open a much larger conversation about control, narrative management, and reputation at the highest level. This episode lays the groundwork for understanding the strategies, ...

This is the main event of Molly's Top PR Wins and Fails of 2025 series, recorded live on Substack (aired Friday, December 19) and built around the stories that truly owned the year: culture-war outrage that turned into real market impact, celebrity reputations getting torched (sometimes by their own silence), late-night becoming a political battleground, and the kind of persona erosion that turns “brand equity” into “lawsuit energy.” If you listened to Part Two (ranks 10 through 6), this...

This week’s episode kicks off Part One of The Top PR Wins and Fails of 2025 by pulling straight from the headlines and social media feeds that dominated the year. Instead of rehashing scandals, it digs into the decisions behind them: who understood the moment they were in, who badly misread their audience, and who confused being everywhere online with being trusted. From cultural power plays to celebrity miscalculations, the pattern is clear and a little uncomfortable. You can win the attention ...

This week’s episode gives you a front row seat to my Friday live sessions, where culture, crisis, and community collide in the best possible way. Think of it as a sampler plate of reputational highs and lows. Some hits. Some misses. A few absolute disasters. And plenty of sharp commentary from the people who show up ready to spar. We dug into the stories bubbling across media, politics, entertainment, and news. Here’s what we got into: • The tightening screws around Pete Hegseth and the trip ...

A close look at Tatiana Schlossberg's viral New Yorker essay, A Battle with My Blood. It is an emotional piece that blends grief, legacy, and quiet fury, and it signals a deeper shift inside the Kennedy family. The episode walks through the layers of the essay and the choices behind it. From the shock of Schlossberg's leukemia diagnosis, to the way she describes the strained healthcare system, to her understated but unmistakable criticism of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., this story becomes both a pe...

This week’s episode dives into a crowded lineup of public figures who all managed to confuse PR maneuvering with actual accountability: President Trump’s “quiet piggy” moment on Air Force One and the broader pattern behind his attacks on women in the press, Larry Summers’ fog-filled non-apology after his Epstein emails resurfaced, Pope Leo XIV’s straightforward call for human dignity contrasted with a White House response that dodged the moral point entirely, Kevin Spacey’s nightclub comeback pe...

This episode starts with a line that should make anyone in communications sit up a little straighter. Michael Wolff, a bestselling Trump biographer and longtime access journalist, emailed Jeffrey Epstein with strategic advice about how Epstein could handle questions about Donald Trump. Not expose him. Not confront him. Advise him. And now, those emails are a crisis in themselves. Today’s episode focuses on the messaging behind Wolff’s interactions with Epstein. Not the salacious details, not t...