The PR Breakdown with Molly McPherson

Three television news networks asked Molly McPherson to break down the Macklemore, Ed Sheeran and Robert Kraft story this week. She said no to all three. Not because it is not a story, but because the frame they wanted...

Amanda Hirsch posted a Polymarket ad about the Lindsay Clancy trial on the Friday that trial ended in a mistrial. By Sunday there was a Notes App apology on Instagram, three paragraphs, comments turned off. Most of the...

Callaway spent three days saying it was disappointed by an ad. Then its CEO admitted Callaway approved that ad before it was posted. This episode is about the gap between those two statements, and what a company reveals...

Three parties could have spoken about Hayden Panettiere. One had ten years with her and said nothing. One had ninety minutes and wrote her a letter. One was her mother. This is an episode about standing — proximity plus...

Brad Pitt gave Esquire a Monday. Molly McPherson breaks down what he actually bought with it. The September cover profile reads like an ordinary man letting a writer into his house — the dogs, the Perrier, a charcuterie...

A self-help influencer with nearly nine million followers is being sued by her own business partner, who is also one third of her marriage and, according to the filings, the person who wrote her books. That is the story...

The CEO of Cracker Barrel lost her job this week, and the tell was sitting in an interview she gave months earlier. A year after the logo backlash — the one that generated a wall of press, then a second spike now...

Taylor Farms got the apology it wanted. The FDA told the company that one iceberg lettuce product from Central Mexico had a “confirmed positive” cyclospora test, then said the next day it had made a mistake and the...

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...

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...

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...

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...

<p>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...

<p>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...

<p>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...