The PR Breakdown with Molly McPherson

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 one was ripped straight from Molly's morning. A client in the middle of a professional crisis that went viral and personal - social media vigilantes mobilizing online, a position lost - and the conversation kept landing on a single question: when someone types your name into a search engine in June 2026, what actually comes up? Google? Social media? A Reddit thread? Or an AI-written answer you never saw coming? Linda Zebian, VP of Communications at Muck Rack and a ten-year veteran of N...

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...

Five scientists were escorted out of a diabetes conference by police for handing out a scientific paper — published in the host's own journal. By the time the American Diabetes Association finished explaining itself, its president and president-elect had resigned, and the editorial those five hoped 200 people might read had 76,000 views. Everyone is covering the removal. Molly is covering the two statements that came after it — the apology that blamed the people it was apologizing to, the peace-

A 37-year 60 Minutes correspondent got fired in a conference room over a dinner he refused to attend. Scott Pelley lost his job and won the PR war in the same week, and the side that was supposed to be running the institution handed him the moral high ground in writing. Everyone is covering the firing. Molly is covering the two dueling statements, the word "performative" in a termination letter, and the moment CBS made it personal while Pelley kept it strictly business. Chapters: 0:00 — The Cin

When a Senate campaign gets hit with a sexting scandal, the spouse is supposed to disappear. Amy Gertner grabbed her phone, walked into a cloud of Maine blackflies, and recorded the most effective crisis response of the cycle. Everyone is covering the Wall Street Journal texts. Molly is covering the betrayal underneath them, and the moment a candidate who built his brand on owning his record reached for the worst page in the 2026 crisis playbook. Chapters: 0:00 — The Reddit Bomb That Finally Det