24 hours in the BBC Presentergate spin cycle.

After another discombobulating 24 hours in the BBC Presentergate spin cycle, I find myself dwelling not on where the stakeholding organisations lie on the chessboard, nor on what the story says about the state of contemporary media and mass communication, but on the human beings watching their futures being pinballed around the news agenda.
 
The reason the story keeps shapeshifting is fundamentally lack of available facts. We don’t know what happened. And in my experience, this is often compounded by what I am call the Vicious Cycle of Human Fragility:
 
In the understandable panic caused by the hydraulic pressure of a crisis, people don’t tell even those with their best interests at heart the full story for fear of reprisals or in the hope that an embarrassing detail is in some ways tangential to the issues currently causing the crisis.
 
This creates an information vacuum which, in the case of stories like this, is filled by traditional and social media alike. Our herd mentality exacerbates this. At some point, the torrent of memes, hot-takes, and general digital amplification of ‘water-cooler chat’ makes us forget that we’re dealing with real humans, not a new interactive form of Netflix drama. As our empathy dissipates the crushing pressure and anxiety on the story’s subjects only increases. And it’s not just them; when a story becomes a national obsession, their family can be drawn into the maelstrom, which brings an entirely different and undeserved set of pressures.
 
So too, does the pressure on the power brokers. The Sun has to double down on its scoop. The BBC has to present as both a responsible employer and a responsible public broadcaster. Due process gives way to kneejerk reactions that can intensify the spotlight’s glare and push the humans affected by them towards their personal crush depth.
 
The anxiety and panic caused by this situation can blind even the most intelligent, rational human to the sensible path. The consequences can be fatal if the crisis causes them to lose their career or personal life.
“Fame has never been more dangerous” is how I summarised Caroline Flack’s tragedy when the Guardian asked.
 
So, beyond the strategic machinations and contextual analysis that can be extracted from this increasingly sorry tale, the most important lesson for anyone in my profession is that human beings are at the heart of any PR Crisis. It takes EQ built through experience to guide someone pushed way beyond reason, someone approaching their personal crush depth, in a major crisis. As a practical note, a mental health plan is just as crucial to any crisis management strategy in the modern age as its communications or legal elements. 
 
So as this increasingly phantasmic media circus rolls on, I hope the people involved have advisors with the knowledge and human empathy to extricate them from the vicious cycle and put their mental health and well-being first