The Coverup Always Outlives the Crisis

Headlines That Reveal Crisis Patterns

Molly McPherson 0:00

So I'm gonna, I'm gonna highlight like a couple stories here. And they're in my, they're in my world. They may not be in your world, but there are headlines. One I have from this week's headlines, New York Times, USA Today, and then a couple just little interesting stories here.

Vrabel And Russini Photo Scandal

Molly McPherson 0:14

So I want to talk about Mike Vrabel. And I know, again, there's so many of you who do not care about this story. I get it every time I talk about it, but it was a top headline story yesterday. And it is, it is one of the best. Like when I do my roundup of my top 10 PR crises of the year, I know Mike Vrabel and Diana Roussini will be in that top 10. Because it's not about the fact that he's Mike Vrabel and the coach of the New England Patriots, and she's a reporter. It's and it's a story about them. It's how they bumbled it. But the quick refresher, this is back in April. We're now heading into July, folks. New York Post published the photos of Vrabel and athletic reporter of Diana Roussini. They're at the resort in Arizona. We all know about that. But where this became a story that veered deeply in my lane was Mike Vrabel's immediate response and Diana Roussini. So all indications tell us that the New York Post reached out to them for comment. They very likely had no idea what the New York Post had on it, which is why Mike Vrabel thought, uh, said, I'm just gonna assume that they had nothing. That was a bad choice because they had plenty there. But we're all basing this on his term laughable. He called it laughable. The word laughable itself is not the problem, but what is meant by laughable? People following the story, which is a lot of people, and a lot of people following it for the same reasons. I believe me, I've gotten so much grief from Patriots fans telling me this isn't a story, it doesn't matter, blah, blah, blah. I am a Mike Vrabel fan. We are a New England Patriots household. And when I'm saying it, like it's a problem, also because I do this for a living. It's the contempt. That's what laughable was. It's contempt for people who find the story interesting. People do not find, and this is what I say, and you tell me, people do not find Mike Vrabel, head coach of the Patriots, allegedly having an affair with the reporter interesting because it's Mike Vrabel and Diana Roussini. Most people, I would argue, don't even know who Diana Roussini was. If you don't really follow sports, they have no idea. Many probably don't even know what Mike Vrabel is, but it's the fact that they try that they essentially they lied. And when people lie in real time, people are interested. And that's why it's a it that's why it was an interesting story. So the story has been going on and on. I was bad a couple weeks ago. Chris Van Buka, he's the NFL reporter for the US for USA Today. He reached out to me about his story. And I feel so bad that I did not highlight it. So I want to highlight a couple things here in it. And then I'm quickly gonna go about what broke this week, and then we'll move on to the other stories. Now, Substack, yay, has given us shareability. Are we here? Are we seeing the share? Yes, we are. Okay, so this came out June 8th. Chris Bombaka, great guy. We were chatting. He's giving me so nice. He said he would talk to my son, uh, who's rising this force journalism. Okay. Mike Vrable called Diana Roussini's photos laughable. Expert calls response a disaster. One guess who that expert is. So I talked to him a couple of times. But so this kind of sets up the story and why I like this article so much. It's because what he was saying in this article is he wasn't focused, he was focusing on why it's still a news story. He was talking about the reputation of it. So focused on laughable. So here are some of my quotes. According to Molly McPherson, a crisis communication strategy actually remarked too. Oh, I didn't even notice that he put Anna Patriots fan in there. Oops, I didn't even notice that. And I said, Ray Bull is running, in my opinion, a staged rehabilitation, albeit somewhat clumsily. And I remember when I said the word clumsily, I said I thought, oh, how ironic if I say the word clumsily. Everything he's doing is sequence to move from the initial denial in the beginning to where we are now. But now the goal, the goal post, as they say, has moved because I spoke to him in June. Now I have to add another. Oh, so basically the the head up, what I'm saying here is he needed to take accountability. We all know this. If you're in this chat, you know I talk about accountability all the time. And people are still looking for it. And it's not just people, everyone's moved on from the story, really for the most part, but reporters haven't moved on because it's still like an open case. It's almost like an unsolved mystery. They're still gonna keep working on the story. And there are gonna be people, Patriots, fans, other people like me, who are going to do it. So what McPherson noticed during Vrabel's attempts to explain himself is that he spoke without acknowledging what happened. My quote, I've had some difficult conversations with people I care about with my family. That's his quote, sorry, the organization, the coaches, and the players. Those have been positive and productive. And he also said, What I can promise you is that my family, this organization, the team, our fans most importantly, will get the best version of me going forward. That's all fine and good to put that in a statement, but it's not accountability. So I'm saying that statement came up short. Quote, Molly McPherson, accountability that only activates when you get caught isn't accountability. You know what, you guys? I love that line. And Mike Brabell hasn't taken any accountability. And then Chris was so nice to explain that I'm on TikTok and the followers that I have. Anyway, then it was his decision to step away from the draft. And I do have to highlight, he did say he re-he interviewed Dr. Marianne Fisher from St. Mary's University. This is in Canada. She's a psychology professor. Smart to go to her, but psychology professors are not crisis managers. She said that she thought it was a win-win because she said she would feel better about putting her faith in someone to lead an organization she's passionate about if the person has the maturity to acknowledge they weren't at peak performance and step away even during day three of the NFL draft. Now, and then her quote, I think admitting that there was a distractability issue, but also what resonates, he's given an image or making statements about how much he's concerned about his family. Okay, now I don't want to, I'm not gonna criticize her. In her context as a psychologist, those are good answers. But what's missing from the crisis management point of view is that lack of accountability. He still hasn't admitted it. Okay. Diana Rossini still hasn't admitted it. So that's still out there. Now we're up to today, or this week, I should

Why Contempt Fuels A Story

Molly McPherson 6:38

say. New York Times comes out with another story. And of course, this gets picked up everywhere. Even the USA Today article that that Chris wrote, quoting me, oh my gosh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like all the my Google alerts went crazy. It got so much pickup because he was nice enough to include me, but they put me in the in the headline saying that it's laughable. And part of me, I'm gonna be honest, like the New England Pats fan in me goes, I hate to be the headline behind, honestly, my favorite coach. That really bums me out. But you know what? Values are values. These are my values. So let me just give you a quick update. And here's the reason why it's so bad and why it's so messy. It's this is what it looks like. It doesn't matter if it's variable and we're seeing, this is what it looks like when people try to skirt accountability. It's when people don't want to own up to shit. This is what it looks like. Okay. So we're still seeing the spin that's happening. So now, Wednesday, the New York Times published a long investigation. Now, I would love to show you the New York Times story, but the New York Times now makes me verify every single time I log in on my desktop. And it verifies me from my VU, my Boston University account, when I taught there. And that's where I had my New York Times subscription, but that's not my email anymore. So I can't share that with you. And that's annoying to me because I'm paying for the New York Times. Anyway, New York Times publishes a long investigation headline Diana Russini was an NFL insider. Was she also out of bounds? This came out the week in June. Vault, here is the lesson here. If you work in any organization, you're in senior leadership, or you are the person at the center of it. And like Molly McPherson also says, what happens in the professional world happens in the personal world too. When you don't take accountability, stories do not go away. They have legs and they continue. And now we have this story right here. So what we find out, so the story written by Katherine Rossman and Ken Belson, two reporters are on this story. The Times and again, so the Times owns the athletic. Diana Russini wrote for the athletic. And what they found, again, which is exactly what I'm saying, and what we're all saying in this group, too, it's not about the affair. No one is shocked that an NFL coach could possibly be having an affair. No one is shocked by that. But what she did was she got caught. So this is what she did. A New York Post reporter, this is the stuff that I find so fascinating, knocked on her car window on Easter Sunday. She waited for two days to tell her bosses. So what that means, when they knocked, when they knocked on her window, which, oh my gosh, what a setup when that happened. You know, the first call she made was to Mike Rebel. That's where the two of them started coming up with something. Okay, we can give her Easter Monday. Okay, fine. But she still waited two days because what they were trying to do, which is so clear, they're trying to manage it themselves. And that's why it got so messy. And then when she made the call, her first call wasn't to the editor at the athletic. She made, well, we can call this a trap. It's when you think you are more important and you have more sway that you go to the top. She ended up going to the CEO of the New York Times with this assumption that she's so important that the New York Times is going to quash the story, which is exactly what the Patriots tried to do as well. Quash it. What happens when you try to go to a tabloid and quash a story? Can you say the opposite? They go, ding, they love that. It's a Christmas Day to them. So months later, she texts a Times reporter and called herself a quote, former journalist. And by the way, do you know how much money she made in that job? $800,000. That's what her income used to be. So she's lost all that money. She tried again to manage the story. And then she said, You cannot quote me. And the reporter said, We're on the record. Now that would be a mistake that other people not in media would make. She's a reporter. She is a reporter. And she did not know the rules of on the record, off the record. Why? Is it because she's a bad reporter? No. Ego. She's so used to getting her way and so used to just picking up the phone. The article also highlights she got pulled over by a police officer, saying a lot of problems in her car, driving her two boys, and she was speeding. And to get out of the ticket, she said she'd call a head coach of a team. They have not, they've not confirmed who that head coach was. But this is who we're starting to get a sense of the entitlement. And again, doesn't matter that it's these two. This is what I see in my job all the time. Not only where we highlight these people, like where we all do it together, but in my work, it's the entitlement, contempt plus entitlement. Okay. So now what this is in terms of crisis textbook, if we get into the academic, if you will, of what happens here, it's textbook information control. Not really academic, but Molly academic. When I write my doctrine and all this, it's trying to control information. And control is driven by emotion. And then what we're seeing her doing in this article is the manipulation. She's not clarifying for the sake of truth. She's trying to manipulate and strong arm to control the information. And when you look at the mechanics of that from a crisis management point of view, we are not judging. Again, you, and I think you're all with me on this. You get you've lived long enough, you've experienced long enough, or your friends have experienced enough that you judge differently when you're older because you understand now. Sometimes you understand, like I'm sure many of you come on when you hear, oh, Mike Vrabel, coach, has been married for over 20 years, married your high school sweetheart. Are we surprised that there might be some great edges in a no, no one's surprised by that. It's not the affair. The mechanics that we see is a control, is they try to control it. So speaking of that, so in sum, it is now June 25th, okay, the week that the New York Times comes out with this huge story about it. Chris Brambuka, USA Today, the one who I spoke to a couple weeks ago, who did the deep dive on the reputation, which is why I love speaking to him about it. Spoke to him a couple times about it. He did a follow-up story as well. He's the NFL reporter. And he was in the room when Mike Vrabel was giving his press conference. So you know me, or if you know me, you know when I'm speaking to a USA Today reporter and he wants my quote. I go, before we get to my quotes, I have to ask you a few questions. So he was telling me what it was like, what it was like in the room there. So this story will continue. The story will continue to have lengths because still no accountability. And also now we're seeing the mechanics on the back end of what's happening

ADA Meeting Ejections And Fallout

Molly McPherson 13:36

there. Now, speaking of mechanics on the back end, two weeks ago, we all together talked about the ADA. We talked about the American Diabetes Association. And I said that it hit me a couple ways because one, it was a mess. It was a crazy PR mess. But also, I donate to them because my son is plagued, and I'll say that word, plagued with he's a type one diabetic. And it's a lot. So anyway, so they had a big conference in New Orleans, and it was the scientific sessions, and we know what happened there that we all did the chat, and we broke down on the chat what happened with the ADA. And we broke down how they tried to control this group of researchers, clinicians, who want to put out an editorial and senior leadership at the ADA said it's not so fast. The police come, uh, and then we have a lot of statements about blaming the clinicians, the people, the editor of their own publication, people who contribute to their own publication. Now, because DMs gammon, of course, people are telling me stuff, people who are there all over the place. One person in my DMs sent me. If you were at the American Diabetic Association scientific sessions, I don't know, I'm assuming many of you weren't, but I want to show you this as a real-time example of where things go sideways. Now, there is a big headline. There's gonna be like a little on Molly's shoulder here, and it's not just gonna be me, it's gonna be all of us because we all chatted about it. What the ADA did wrong, and what would we recommend that they do? Here's an example of what the ADA did wrong or what they tried to do. Can you all see this? Yes. All right, so this was sent to me. This was in the app at the conference. Again, many of you might think, I don't even know about the story. I don't care about the American Diabetes Association. Fine, fair, but this is what I see every day. I deal with this in my work, I deal with this morning in my work. And again, this the through line, Diana Roussini, the mechanics of Diana Roussini trying to wriggle her way out. Okay. Do you remember as volunteers, researchers, researchers, clinicians, and scientific session attendees? Many of you have heard about or witnessed an incident at the 26th scientific sessions. That, unfortunately, comma, resulted in several attendees being escorted out of the meeting. We want to address the situation directly. So now what do they do? We know the framework that I live and die by. It's my indestructible PR framework. Ding, trademarked, own it, explain it, promise it. The accountability comes first. We all know, if we're in this chat, we all know this, they're explaining first. When you explain first, then you're then you're gonna quickly go off the rails to the ADA room. So now what they do, they tapped into their mission statement, which I say that's a tactic out of my toolkit when we're writing statements. Let's just let's just go back to the mission. What's our mission? So that's a good move to go to the mission statement. We're committed to being a nonpartisan organization that welcomes scientific inquiry, respectful dialogue, diverse perspectives, blah, blah, blah. And they're adding that in there because of the respectful dialogue. Now, the next paragraph is approximately a dozen attendees of this. We're just we're distributing a diabetes care editorial published June 26th, both inside the ADA session rooms and in the lobby. So what we're seeing there again, let me show you the back end of it. We're as which we talked about, right? Chill, yes, escorted out of the building. That is a disaster. It's a huge disaster. Let me give you the huge, the second part of it. Every person involved in the situation, regardless of the perspective, cares deeply about improving the lives of people. So now we're talking about them, the ADA. For 86 years, we have overcome challenges again. And then they're going on and on all about the ADA. As we reflect on this incident, our hope is that we move forward together with grace, mutual stress. So we talked about that. That what they what essentially that does is you're blaming your own people for coming in and handing out the editorials. So they're falling on the rules. Now, black, white rules, right, wrong. You can do that when it matters, but when you're using it as a shield, it becomes a little problematic. Now, I didn't get a chance to highlight this, but what's very interesting, our, I think it was June 9th, is when we did our chat. We did our live. On June 10th, the algorithm fedh, because I was getting all ADA stuff, headline. ADA leader apologizes to researchers ejected from meeting. Sub CEO says the organization will commission a review of events. It did not get a lot of play, a lot of huge play, which honestly is okay. It's okay. The goal in a crisis isn't the same goal as a press release where you're trying to full blast and get the message out there everywhere. Because this story was a contained story. The goal for the ADA was to get through it. So it actually worked in their favor. But the CEO, his name's Charles Chuck Henderson, did a video and essentially, oh, I don't know. Yeah, basically laid out a lot of things that we talked about in our lives. So what Molly suspects, based on some of the views on there and the emails that were on there, is that it that someone within the building watched it and even watched the chat and heard from you all as well, and said, Could we try this? I think this is what the problem is. And in his apology, that's what he did. He apologized to the New Orleans five, as everyone mobilizing started calling them, which is exactly what we all said on our chat. That's what he needed to do. This act that the ADA surrounded them, law enforcement removed them and then made them the problem and made the ADA the victim. You can't do that. You cannot be the victim and the hero in the same story. You can't do that. It doesn't work. That's why I didn't work for the ADA. And then he made the shift.

What A Real Apology Requires

Molly McPherson 19:47

And what do you know? It's as if we all wrote it ourselves. And now the story is boom, and it's a way. It's away. Time it now, compare it with Mike Vrabel and Dynamo Rosini, which still goes on for months. Now, CEO Chuck Henderson can get on with the business of curing diabetes, which is the mission. So notice the difference here in instinct. That's what we look for. We're looking at one instinct is to cover, is to manage on the back end and think we can manage it on our own. The other instinct is to go to the CEO and go, listen, this is what we have to do. And then we'll get through it. And then that CEO, Chuck, Chuck Henderson, we're getting him credit for this, said, All right, we'll do it. Do I love that it was a video apology? I guess I have to ask people now what they think of video apologies. I don't love them as much. Video apologies to me always seemed so formula, performative, don't capture what I think it needs to capture. And in the case of Henderson, the CEO of the ADA, it was clear that he was reading from a teleprompter. And if, and I guess here's my rule on it, if I were to do a quick rule, not that I've said it, but I'm just saying it now. If you can't speak from the heart, from the head and the heart, about what the apology is and maybe just look down at notes, then it's not really an apology. Because if you're reading a script, then you're reading what someone wrote to you who watched our live on a script. But here's where we're gonna give them a break. The ADA's communication wasn't about controlling the narrative. And that's what we're learning now. Okay, so now we have three examples.

Bricks And Minifigs Fandom Crisis

Molly McPherson 21:20

All right, story number three. I know people aren't necessarily following the story, but I had so many people on my DMs mention the story. So I have to bring this story out because honestly, I did not know what the story was at all. And then Greg, my partner, he said, I gotta, and he said, I have to admit something right now. He said, I was looking, I was looking at the comments on one of your posts, and someone kept asking you about this, and I don't know what it means. And I told him, he said, I have no idea what it means either. Mini fakes. Does anyone know about bricks and minifigs? Bricks and minifigs. I'm gonna tell you, I had no idea, never heard of it before until it came up in my DMs, and everyone said to me, Are you gonna talk about bricks and minifigs? Yeah. So Anyway, I there's so many things going through my head. I didn't know anything about it. So then it must have been a week ago, two weeks ago, because it's the same nails, same manicure. Bricks and minifigs. Yes. I went in to get my manicure, lavender gray, and I'm walking in and I noticed next door to my nail place that I've been going to for years is a bricks and minifigs. How have I not noticed this? Bricks and minifigs is a Lego store. Bricks. Okay. But I still didn't know what minifigs were. So after I had my nails finished, smoky lavender, I walk over there and I walk in. And people my age don't walk into bricks and minifigs. But there I am. And I come up to the counter and the two young bricks and minifigs figs worker come up to me and said, Hey, hi, can we help you? What are you doing in here? And then I said, Yeah, here's a question. What can you tell me about the crisis going on with bricks and minifigs? You would have thought that I walked in confessing a murder. Everybody in the store, okay, it was a handful of people who went like this. And then the two guys at the counter looked at each other like this. Like, have I walked into? They start to explain the story to me. And I'm gonna be honest with you, and I said I would talk about it. I still don't completely understand the story. So they explained it. And here's in the most simplest of terms, it's a dispute over a Lego collection. And if you haven't been in there, it's just Legos, okay? It's Legos everywhere. Anyone who's had kids, anyone's maybe even sons who are obsessed with Legos. I don't think my daughter's ever got into Legos, but there's everywhere there's Star Wars, there's Simpsons, there's Lord of the Rings, there's uh Pokemon, all the different things. And this matters in crisis. I'm gonna tell you why this matters. So, yes, Nikki, that's exactly how they looked at me was we can finally spill the tea. It wasn't we can spill the tea, it's finally we could talk about it, but we can't. This is what they kept doing. This is what they kept doing. So what happened was I'm like, who do you keep looking for? What is they were so afraid to tell me the story? So what does that tell us? So my brain, I'm like, there was a memo clearly that went out and clearly went out to these employees that said, when people come in asking about this, do not talk about this. But this is what it is in general. So there was a dispute over a Lego collection. There was a franchise, many things, brings me franchise, promised someone their Lego collection, this whole big thing, it was gonna be consigned and everything boils down to money. And then I believe that this franchise was sold and someone else came in, did not honor the same agreement, and it completely blew up. Now, why it matters, let's bring it back into my world. I don't know bricks and minifigs world, but what I do know in the world of mobilization and community, because what is community? Okay, it's a collection of people, a collection of people who care about the same thing. But there was a memo that went out that said, nobody can talk about this. You cannot talk about it. That's why they were so secretive. And these poor guys said people were calling the store and harassing them, threatening them. This was a big, big deal. So when you think of Star Wars and then you think of Lego people and it's all together at once, and then you put in YouTube and then Patreon, you're getting into the depths of that collector community world. And here's where it is. This morning in my job, I was counseling a client who's dealing with a community mobilized against them. And every single thing I have to do for them is we're looking for the tripwires. Because if you have a tripwire with a community, it completely blows up. A great example in the news algorithm right now. I don't know if many of you are in this world, like data centers, community, like actual communities. But when you get into these deep communities, and Nikki pointed it out, fandom, yes, the fandom world, then you really get, and that's why it became a crisis, which is so fascinating. And the reason why so many people are asking me about it is because they're so deeply invested in the community. That's why they're so deeply invested in the crisis. The lesson, if you're the CEO, let's say of that company of the Bricks and Minifigs, and if you don't respect the community and why this is a big story, you're gonna lose it. And that is what kind of happened with Bricks and Minifigs. They were, they were just kind of hoping that it would go away. Oh, it's not mainstream, it's not mainstream. And it really wasn't huge mainstream, but when you're mainstream in your community, and your community is, like I said, a fandom. And I have fan, like I have a sister-in-law who dresses up in Mandalorian clothes and all that. So I'm in the first ring of the fandom. I definitely see it. So walking out of there, I just sat there and went, wow, do I have a takeaway where I can say who's right or who's wrong? Oh my God, I'm smart enough to know my business never to say that. Could you say if I could come out and say and criticize the Star Wars guy? No, I would never do that. But that's what happens when Bricks and Minifigs kind of let it get away. And then all the franchises out there, which are manned by probably the same guys as my local Bricks and Minifangs, young guys who work there. But every and what's funny, every single person in that out or that store knew about it. And they were all chiming in. They all knew the story, which is which is crazy.

Pride Night Messaging And Silence

Molly McPherson 27:11

Okay. And then the last thing I want to mention, because this just came by quick, is did anybody see Buster Posey? This comes up in Pride Week. It's Pride Month. When I went to the vet hospital yesterday, they were giving away Pride Month bandanas for dogs, which I loved. I thought that was such a nice touch. But it is Pride Month. But it is a Pride Month in a very different time, very different administration, very different time for Pride Month. So it's no surprise that this is gonna come up or we're gonna get entangled. If you remember a couple of years ago, the LA Dodgers had a Pride Month flip-flop issue. So now we have Buster Posey, three-time World Series champion, now a member of the San Francisco Giants ownership group. So he's a guy who helps lead baseball operations. And I'm saying this, and my son just presented to baseball operations of an MLB team. It is not the San Francisco Giants. Otherwise, I would not be doing this story at all. And then my daughter works for another MLB team, which is so funny. But I want to bring up this up because I think this is a great example. And if any of you saw this in your algorithm. So now we get into some crosshairs here where players do not want to celebrate Pride Night, especially with the LA Dodgers. They had Pride Night, then they didn't have Pride Night because they had so much pressure from, I'm pulling this from my head, Marco Rubio and Catholic organizations, very conservative Catholic organizations. And there was a group of, it was, oh God, they're they were a group, they were dressed up as nuns. They're from San Francisco. They were, they called themselves like a queer performative group, and they're very popular. Everybody loved them and they were going to be a part of this night. And then the LA Dodgers flip-flop because they got so much pressure from the Catholic in the Catholic League. So they flip-flopped on that. And then they had to flip-flop again. And this was right on the heels, if you remember, of Dylan Mulvaney, Bud Light, like all that back in the day when this happened. And so same month, same time frame, just a couple of years ago. So now, fast forward, we're in a different administration. So baseball players and or just let's just say public figures are going to feel like they're a little bit more of a protected class when things like this happen. So that's why I'm crossing out on the hat. They're not, and they're gonna bring in the religious elements of it. So what Buster Posey did is when he sat down and it was, it's not really a presser because he was in, I was in the dugout doing the interview. He said, he opened it up by saying, I'm not gonna talk about it. He just doesn't want to talk about it. And his words, quote, out of respect to everybody involved, it's not something I'm going to revisit, end quote. As Jill said in the chat, that's a fumble on a fumble. Can we appreciate Buster Posey's position? Yes, because he doesn't, nobody wants to get, no one wants to be the spokesperson in a crisis, because nobody wants to be the center of a crisis, which means there's a target on your head in a crisis. We all get this, especially if you're part of an ownership group. But this is why mission statements matter. This is why mission statements exist. This is why we have DEI. This is why we have diversity, equity, and inclusion. And when you have an organization and you have an organization policy on it, if you are a Buster Posey, you can fall back on the policy of the club. But perhaps I do not know this. I have no idea whatsoever. I'm gonna make an assumption that Buster Posey is looking out for all his players and some of his players, maybe the offending players, and maybe Buster Posey agreed with the players. Maybe we don't know that. But the move, the mechanics behind it, suggest he didn't want to get involved in it. So by doing that move, again, it's like the mechanics. You are trying to control the message, which brings us back to our first story. Another quote, he said, if you want to ask baseball questions, I'll answer baseball questions. And he said it over and over and over. And you want to know what? When it involves a baseball pitcher with anti-LGBTQ messaging on an MLB uniform, buster, that's a baseball question. It is good. So that's why it didn't work. And then a PR person literally had to step in and say something. And he just kept saying, either we're it's either baseball or done. And what that is contempt. Again, you can't do it with okay. He didn't go silent, which happens a lot. He spoke up, he said something, but what he did was he shut the door. He can't shut the door. So the crisis lesson, and we all know this crisis lesson, no comment is always a comment.

Closing Lesson No Comment Speaks

Molly McPherson 31:42

All right, everyone. That wraps this week for the PR breakdown.