Breaking Down the Media Statements: Kimmel, Trump, Tylenols Counterpunch

Two big stories dropped this week and they both happened at the same time. Monday, late afternoon. 3:44pm Eastern Daylight Time. Just in, Jimmy Kimmel to be reinstated after suspension following Charlie Kirk's comments. ABC says. 3:49 ABC ends Jimmy Kimmel's suspension and his show will return Tuesday. 4:51pm Trump's autism announcement is underway. 456, just in, Trump suggests Tylenol during pregnancy can contribute to higher autism risk. A link Expert say is unproven. 501Trump announces FDA recommendations on Tylenol use. 502Maternal Fetal Medicine Group says it's safe to use Tylenol in pregnancy. Oh my goodness. That is whiplash of news stories. Hey there. Welcome to the PR Breakdown podcast. I'm your host, Molly McPherson, and I'm a little unprepared for this podcast. I already had something in the can. Then the announcement comes from the Walt Disney Company that Jimmy Kimmel is coming back. I hopped on social media right away, knowing full well I had to record this podcast. And just as I'm recording, I get another notification from the New York Times about what was happening at the White House that Donald Trump was making an announcement with RFK Jr and Dr. Oz on either side. Is that by design? Well, we don't know, but let's look at the evidence. Story one, the Walt Disney Company and Jimmy Kimmel. So let's start with the Disney statement on bringing Kimmel back. As you know. Quick rewind. Last Monday, Jimmy Kimmel Live Kimmel reacted to the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

He had some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang, desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to to score political points from. You can see how hard the President is taking this. My condolences on the loss of your friend Charlie Kirk. May I ask, sir, personally, how are you holding up over the last day and a half, Sir? I think very good. And by the way, right there, you see all the trucks? They've just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House. Yes, he's at the fourth stage of grief construction.

That clip set everything off because by Wednesday, FCC chair Brendan Carr was publicly threatening ABC's affiliate licenses. Nextstar and Sinclair. Two massive station groups said they'd preempt the show. And Disney, ABC's parent company, decided to suspend Kimmel indefinitely. No surprise, it lit off a firestorm which was leading into the weekend where we were going to have the Charlie Kirk Memorial, which aired on Sunday, September 21st. And if you watch that memorial or even heard it or saw clips on social media, there was a lot of political rhetoric, strong rhetoric against the progressives, the left, liberals, Democrats. This was a lot of posturing from a political point of view. But now we have on Monday afternoon, Disney puts out a statement where it is a complete backtrack on what they did with Jimmy Kimmel. Now before I read the statement, I want to mention that last Friday I did a live on substack. I tend to go on once a week minimum, usually on Fridays, sometime in the morning between 9am and noon. Breaking down the big story of the week. It's a live chat. I want to get other people's opinion on it as well. We broke down what was happening with the whole Jimmy Kimmel situation. FCC chair Brendan Carr appeared on another right wing conservative who actually had more subscribers than Brenny Johnson then Charlie Kirk. You could look at his appearance on there and he was, I mean, essentially pressuring these station groups where they own a bunch of affiliates. Now the Next Stars and the Sinclair broadcasting companies of the world was trying to acquire Tango, which is another media group. So we have business there, we have money, which I always say about crisis, it always comes down to money. So that involves the fcc because the FCC was putting pressure. We can do it the easy way or we can do it the hard way.

And.

And when Brian Selter from CNN was asking Brendan Carr about what he had to say with the pressure to these groups, Brendan Carr replied back with a gif from the office of Steve Carell and Rainnn Wilson's character kind of like putting their hands up in the air. I mean, what a bizarre thing for an FCC chair to write back. But the outcry was strong and in this live we talked about there's going to be now boycotts against Disney, against Hulu, which was really hard because only Murders in the Building is on. And I love it this season. It's so good. But I started reading some of the statements and one of the statements that I read I thought was so good. Let me pull a part of it. It's from the Writers Guild of America west and the Writers Guild of America East. One of the things that I mentioned, I didn't really see it anywhere in commentary or in the news so I could be off base on it. But it feeds into this kind of boycott itis that's out there. What happens when you trigger unions, when you trigger other groups, they mobilize and they mobilize together and that pressure builds up and people do things. And what do people do now when they boycott and they want to make a stand? They tend to punch where it hurts. And that's usually finances. So I think finances had something to do with Disney's decision. But this is part of the statement by both of these writer gu Quote, as a guild, we stand united in opposition to anyone who uses their power and influence to silence the voices of writers or anyone who speaks in dissent. If free speech applied only to ideas we like, we needn't have bothered to write it into the Constitution. What we have signed on to, painful as it may seem, painful as it may be at times, is the freeing agreement to disagree. Wow. I stated on that live. That's an excellent statement. It was so good. And it's not surprising because it's from the Writers Guild, it's from writers. But day by day, the buildup started happening on social media and I think the Walt Disney Company started to feel the pressure. Big names out there started to speak out against it as well. So now that leads us to the Walt Disney. When the notification appeared on my computer that ABC made the statement, I immediately look for the statement. I wanted to read it right away and then hop on social media because that first reading is where I get the gist of the statement. You can get the intent behind the statement. So I didn't want to read it or analyze it before I went on social media. So my social media response was really like a real response. I'm going to quickly read the statement and then let's look at some of the words that they use to see if that can help us discern what's really going on behind the scenes. So this statement was released by the Walt Disney Company late on Monday, September 22nd. In the afternoon last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country. It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill timed and thus insensitive. We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy. And after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday. Now, Disney did not say whether all ABC affiliates were going to bring back the show because some of them balked about carrying Jimmy Kimmel Live. Last week, Sinclair, that is the broadcast group, came out and said that they were going to air the Charlie Kirk Memorial Special on Friday, and they flip flopped and aired Celebrity Family Feud instead. So in the theme of flip flopping, let's break down this statement. So let's start with what they wrote at the beginning, quote, to avoid further inflaming attention situation at an emotional moment for our country. That's deflection. The problem wasn't Jimmy's words. They're saying it was the national mood. The responsibility was spread outward. So don't look inward to us. We didn't do anything wrong. We didn't make a decision. We were just reacting to what was happening in the country, to the mood. And the mood, my dear listener, was created by you. It's their way of saying, it's your fault. You are part of the problem. Another part of the statement. We felt some of the comments were ill timed and thus insensitive. Notice the hedging. Not wrong, not misleading, not blasphemous, just ill timed. Wow, that's minimizing. Shrinking the offense down to optics. Ill timed. Makes it sound like it was a calendar mistake or when we ran it on the show. And what is the right time? Like, would Jimmy Kimmel be okay if he did it on Tuesday night or Wednesday night? And then to call it only insensitive. Their choice, abc, Disney's choice to pull Kimmel created a firestorm. A firestorm is created over something that was just, quote, insensitive from late night television. Wow. Wow. Then once they suspended him and they bring him back in under a week. And this took place due to, quote, thoughtful conversations. Can you imagine what those thoughtful conversations were like? I can imagine that Jimmy Kimmel. I saw Howard Stern make a comment on the air saying that he did not speak to Jimmy Kimmel about any of this, but he gave his opinion where he said, I immediately canceled Disney in support of Jimmy Kimmel. He and Jimmy Kimmel are really, really tight. So Howard Stern is going to defend Jimmy Kimmel. But also Howard Stern was speaking from a place where he had pressure over the years. Not so much recently, but back in his heyday, back in the 90s, he was at war with the FCC. So he's the perfect foil for the government to come out and speak out again. But this statement is really a wishy washy deflection, flip flop statement. Either the suspension was an overreaction or the reinstatement was a retreat. Both can't be true. And Disney used we again and again. We made the decision. We felt we reached a decision. That's corporate fog. It hides who actually made the decision. There's no name attached to this statement from the Walt Disney Company. The only name mentioned is Kimmel, and not even Jimmy Kimmel. Or Jimmy Kimmel Live. They just say Jimmy. So this Kimmel statement wasn't about clarity. It was about optics, buying time and protecting the brand under political fire and also under financial pressure. Now, the second story is Trump and Tylenol. Donald Trump speaking in the Roosevelt Room of the White White House. He was flanked by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz. To make this announcement.

First, effective immediately, the FDA will be notifying physicians that the use of acid. Well, let's see how we say that. Acetaminophen. Acetaminophen. Is that okay? Which is basically commonly known as Tylenol during pregnancy can be associated with a very increased risk of autism. So taking Tylenol is not good. All right, I'll say it. It's not good.

Did you notice how he struggled there? That's why I think he defaulted to Tylenol. It was a lot easier for him to say. But that's alarmist framing. Strong words, very increased risk, not good. With no scientific consensus backing it up. He even admitted, you know, I'm just.

Making these statements from me. I'm not making them these doctors.

That's not careful public health messaging. That's a politician freelancing with people's medical choices. And then he pivoted into vaccines, of course, because RFK Jr standing there calling for smaller doses over the years. Again, no evidence cited. It's a rhetorical move. Stoke fear connected to a broader narrative and let the sound bite live online where it goes in direct contrast. And it's fighting for, for airtime and headline space with the Jimmy Kimmel announcement. He wants it to cover the Kimmel announcement. The effect, panic among expecting mothers, confusion in the medical community, and dangerous undermining of trust in safe medications. And personally, I don't like this fear mongering around a diagnosis of autism. There are plenty of people living with autism. There are plenty of people on the spectrum. There are plenty of places on the spectrum where autism lies. We're labeling it as a problem, and we're labeling people with autism, kids with autism. Why are we painting them as such problems? I mean, yes, it's understandable. It's something that we want to understand more and we want to get closer to how we can work with it so babies aren't born with this challenge, so we understand what's behind autism. But it's so dangerous when we make it seem like it's just this awful, awful thing. I have a nephew has autism, but If I were a parent right now with a child with autism, I would be picking up the phone and calling them and talking to them and telling them that you're perfect, you're perfect, there is nothing wrong with you. There is no reason why we needed a statement from the Roosevelt Room about something that you deal with in your life. I don't like it, but that's my take. That's my Molly take. But then here's the third response. Tylenol, the parent company Kenvue, responded quickly, quote, independent sound science clearly shows that taking acetamyophen does not cause autism. We strongly disagree with any suggestion otherwise. That's the corporate counterpunch. Straightforward denial, grounded in scientific consensus. They went further. Acetamyopin is the safest pain reliever for pregnant women. Without it, women face dangerous choices, suffer through fever, or use riskier alternatives. Bam. This is what Disney's statement lacked, directness. Tylenol acknowledged the stakes, emphasized evidence and outlined the risk of ignoring science. It's not perfect PR after all. They are protecting their product, of course, but it's anchored in data and clarity. Now, they knew this was coming. There was an announcement this morning that President Trump would be making a statement. So I think he was just waiting for it to be timed. But this was a statement that came with a punch. Now, if we line them up and compare them, the Disney statement, it's very vague, defensive hiding between we, Trump, Trump statement, alarmist, unsourced, emotional, designed for headlines, not accuracy, designed for distraction. And Tylenol, firm evidence based, corrective, anchored in research and patient safety. What do they have in common? All three are less about truth than about control. Some of the statements have truth in there. Tylenol was backing it with data, but they needed to control the messaging because their stock plunged. So yes, Kimmel is back and yes, Tylenol is fighting to defend itself against presidential claims. But here's the real through line. We're watching a testing credibility. Who do you believe? Do you believe networks? Do you believe the president? Do you believe scientists? Because in all the story, the stakes are the same. Trust. That's all for this week on the podcast. Thanks so much for listening. Does your head hurt? Mine does. Bye for now.