A PR wakeup call from this week’s events, and the misinformation generation

Sadly, this week we’ve seen the UK unraveling quickly, escalating already tragic events last Monday.

Interestingly, it was the lack of information revealed on the perpetrator that sparked huge public reaction, with the void filled by speculation and anger. It was a prime display of the masses taking ownership of the message.

The teenager who appeared in Liverpool City Magistrates’ Court last Thursday, charged with three counts of murder and ten counts of attempted murder could initially not be named because of his age (17).

In fact, Ursula Doyle, Deputy Chief Crown Prosecutor for Mersey-Cheshire said: “We remind all concerned that criminal proceedings against this defendant are active…and that it is extremely important that there should be no reporting, commentary or sharing of information online which could in any way prejudice these proceedings.”

This was more than an unrealistic expectation, with the opposite already happening on social media, and within hours channels such as X had filled the void with rumours, speculation and an eventual naming (and even address-sharing) of the perpetrator. As we now know, it was the misrepresentation of his religion and nationality which sparked the adverse reaction and hate crimes we have since seen.

Three days later, the judge took the decision and named the suspect saying he was “mindful of the misinformation that had spread regarding the accused’s identity.” But by this time, the far-right and anti-immigration mobs were on an unstoppable roll, and the rest, as they say, is soon to be history (we hope).

But what does this tell us? That, with the rise of social media, there is no longer such a thing as holding back reporting or withholding information of national or human importance, as in fact the end result is likely to be far more negative. Chances are, if the source doesn’t own the story, it will most likely be misrepresented; worst case, in an incendiary manner. And in this particular instance, rumours led to riots and violence nationwide. Everyone suddenly owned their own agenda to influence the outcome, with even Elon Musk jumping into the debate.

In the same fortnight and from a tech PR point of view, the Crowdstrike outage was a good example of how similar happened, but in a very different scenario and in a more condensed time period. The mother of all outages, with businesses globally crashing with a bill for the outage left at 5.4million dollars.

Naturally, everyone looked to Microsoft for answers. CrowdStrike was named within an hour of the news break. While the CEO was relatively quick to respond, the lack of apology wasn’t enough for many, overlooking a classic PR rule. The fall out from the outage to Crowdstrike was inevitable (see below share price over the past four weeks) which arguably would have been pretty dramatic in any case, but the fall could have been softer.

Looking back, is there even a choice about revealing details and communicating as quickly as possible? As PR experts, we’ve always urged a frank and full disclosure post crises, which prioritises human safety, informing the right people with critical information, whilst investigations are underway. What these episodes have demonstrated is that: a) if you’re in a public facing business, having a crisis management plan isn’t even a debate, it’s an absolute essential (and needs to be reviewed and updated regularly). But also b) the speed at which it is deployed needs to be lightning to close any gaps rumours are likely to fill. 

And as a third consideration, organisations now need social expertise to manage the rumour machines on whichever channels they can be found (largely X and TikTok). Damage limitation is driven by providing regular and up to speed information, across both media and social channels. That’s a lot of skill required right there, and not manageable by Generative AI.

Now is the time to own the debate and limit the rumours as, sadly, speed will win over truth every time. But it will be an ever-increasing challenge to hit the right tone and response given very public pressure. One thing is for sure, comms has become more complex for professionals and high risk in the digital age.