Russell Brand Allegations- Reaction from Communication Coach

Career crisis facing Russell Brand, the comedian. He is in the center of an absolute media storm. Crisis communications storm and something that could in fact end his career if not handled the right way. Hi, I'm TJ Walker, a communications coach and crisis communications advisor. I'm going to be analyzing Russell Brand's video statement he put out earlier this week purely through the lens of communication skills and crisis communication best practices. So I'll say this caveat once, twice, three times. I am not in any way taking his side, anyone else's side, the side of those making allegations against him. I am here for you today to help learn lessons on what best practices are for crisis communication. Let's dive right in with with a video he posted on his own YouTube channel.

Hello there, you awakening wonders. Now this isn't the usual type of video we make on this channel where we critique, attack and undermine the news in all its corruption because in this story.

So he's providing some context. This is his normal YouTube channel. He has 6 million viewers and for those of you unfamiliar, he is a very famous comedian. He's been in movies, he's had bestselling books, he's been a wildly popular columnist in prominent newspapers in Great Britain. But he's also a frequent fixture of the talk show circuit here in the United States. Been on msnbc, basically every network, Bill Maher, you name it. So he's had an extraordinarily successful career for the last 20 years or so. Allegations which you can read about elsewhere are quite serious, potentially career ending and have severe legal consequences. This has been his first major statement where he's spoken about it. Let's see how he does. As you can see if you're unfamiliar with him, he is a talented communicator. He has a fantastic voice, accent, an interesting look. He's quite dynamic. He's extraordinarily colorful. I've seen him on page panel TV shows with eight other famous people and he completely dominates as the most interesting and provocative. So he's someone who starts off with extraordinarily clear, powerful communication skills. The issue is how does he use those skills in a particular narrow lens. This crisis situation and media crisis is generally defined as something where an issue is so big, if you don't handle it the right way, it completely can destroy your reputation, destroy your brand, could put you out of business. And when it's the case of an individual, it could end their career and have legal implications. So let's watch. You can see right away he's quite animated and quite a skilled communicator I am the news.

I've received two extremely disturbing letters or a letter and an email, one from a mainstream media TV company, one from a newspaper listing a litany of extremely egregious.

So he's doing something that is considered smart in the crisis communications industry. Here he's surfacing the issue, but he's not giving the explicit detail of all the charges against him. There is the adage of if there's a negative against you floating around and you repeat the negative, people don't hear the nod or that you're not guilty, they just hear the negative twice. And it's cements itself in people's collective consciousness. So he's not saying what the exact charges are in the most explicit manner. And I'll let you Google those elsewhere. We're here just to look at the crisis communication statement, an aggressive attacks as.

Well as some pretty stupid stuff like my community festival should be stopped, that I shouldn't be okay.

So here he's going into dangerous territory. The allegations against him are as serious an allegation legally as one could make against someone short of murder. And he's sort of grabbing onto these tangential issues that somebody complained about a festival. That's not why he's front page news everywhere. That's not why he's getting so much attention. That's not why Google has demonetized him, because someone is concerned about his festival. So he loses points here for trying to bring in straw men and red.

Herrings, be able to attack mainstream media narratives on this channel. But amidst this.

So this is his first big theme, he brings up that he's against the mainstream media and he attacks the mainstream media. So maybe that's why he's getting criticized. I have to tell you, I think this is an extraordinarily bad tactic in a crisis communications situation when you've been accused of felonious behavior to just bash the media. Yes, it can work for some politicians in some contexts in some countries. But even though Russell Brand is political in a lot that he talks about, he's not seen as primarily a politician. Let's watch more.

Litany of astonishing, rather baroque attacks are some very serious allegations that I absolutely refute.

So he does say I absolutely refute it. He is coming across as forceful, as dynamic, as sincere. And again, I'm not making judgments in his favor. I'm simply looking at this through the lens of crisis communication practice. There are going to be people who are accused of things, committing wrongdoing and they are in fact guilty. There are people who are accused of things and they are not guilty. But Basic Crisis Communications does say you come out first of all you should tell the truth. But second of all, if you do think you're guilt or innocent, you should in fact state clearly that you are not guilty of the allegations that you are innocent. And he is doing this forcefully here.

These allegations pertain to the time when I was working in the mainstream, when I was in the newspapers all the time, when I was in the movies and as I've written about extensively in my books, I was very, very promiscuous. Now during of promiscuity, the relationships I had were absolutely always consensual. I was always transparent about that then, almost too transparent. And I'm being transparent about it now as well. And to see that transparency metastasized into something criminal.

I will say again, I'm not defending him and I'm certainly not suggesting he's innocent because he's a good communicator. But he is a fascinating case study of someone who is so verbally dexterous. His use of the English language is almost musical. Again, doesn't mean he's innocent, doesn't mean his career isn't ending. But it is fascinating to watch him use the English language. In his power over words, he is quite compelling. But lest you think I am siding with him, you're going to hear some very strong criticisms in a moment.

No, that I absolutely deny. Makes me question is there another agenda at play?

Okay, here's where I think he is veering into territory that makes him lose credibility. He has been charged by a number of women of committing a number of extraordinarily serious felonies. And he's saying wait a minute, it's really about this other issue over here. The fact that he criticizes the mainstream media. That is a bit of a stretch. And unless you are an absolute 100% die hard Russell Brand fan, I don't know why anyone would find that credible.

Let's watch more particularly when we've seen coordinated media attacks before, like with Joe Rogan when he dared to take a medicine that the main so he's bringing.

In another well known American commentator, Joe Rogan, who has in fact faced criticism for spreading disinformation about a variety of issues. But there has not been a long, long, long line of women accusing Joe Rogan of committing serious felonies. So this is rather thin gruel when it comes to a defense to say I'm completely innocent because I'm like other media figures who are criticized for their politics or having different views. It just doesn't logically follow. If you're going to make a statement where you're trying to appeal to the public, potentially future jurors, prosecutors, you have to make an argument that has some rational connection with the world. And I think he's only appealing to his most devoted fans and to conspiracy theorists. And that's not really going to help him in the broader court of public opinion or in the legal arena mainstream.

Media didn't approve of. And we saw a spate of headlines from media outlets across the world using the same language. I'm aware that you guys have been saying in the comments for a while, watch out, Russell, they're coming.

So he's saying that he's innocent and that all of these allegations from a number of women about felonious acts they are alleging he committed, it's all sort of a media conspiracy because that's why there's all this media coverage. Well, there's media coverage because you are a very famous, well known, and in some cases widely beloved comedian, actor, performer, personality, and there's a flood of allegations that you've committed serious crimes. That's why there's headlines everywhere. So it doesn't really matter if the media likes your media criticism or not. Anyone who's a famous celebrity who has charges of committing serious felonies and attacking people is going to get tremendous media coverage. So saying that there's media coverage, therefore it must be a media conspiracy is wildly unpersuasive, to say the least.

For you. You're getting too close to the truth. Russell Brand did not kill himself. I know that a year ago there was a spate of articles. Russell Brown.

So he's bringing up the fact that his own fans. And look, let's face it, nobody's fans are seen as the most credible judge of your character. Whether you've done something wrong, your fans are often supporting you. He's saying, because his fans have told him that there's going to be criticism of him because he's criticized the mainstream media, so he should watch out for attacks that might hold water if there were just one story from one small outlet and everything is an anonymous source. But that's not what has happened to him. Therefore, this argument rings rather hollow.

Brand's a conspiracy theorist. Russell Brand's right wing. I'm aware.

So, yes, there have been allegations that he sees conspiracy theorists. Yes, he is seen as someone who used to be on the left politically and now has a lot of views on the right. Absolutely. True, but completely irrelevant to the charges that had been brought up against him. Yeah, he may be completely innocent. I'm not saying he's innocent or guilty, but his arguments are such red herrings. They're, they're so irrelevant to why he's in a crisis now. He's not helping himself.

Bringing this up of news media, making phone calls, sending letters to people I know for ages and ages it's been clear to me, or at least it feels to me like there's a serious and concerted agenda to control these kind of spaces and these kind of.

So now he's trying to bridge it to the reason all these allegations of from women saying he's committed felonious acts on them and attacked them. It's really because he has a podcast and a YouTube channel where he periodically criticizes some people in the mainstream media. That's just not ringing true to anyone other than the most devoted of conspiracy theorists because there are a lot of people who have similar media critiques as he does. And there's not a long line of people saying this guy or this person committed felony acts of aggression against me. So it's just not logically following. The other problem he has is he keeps talking about the mainstream media like he's this little guy working from his basement who has five followers. Russell Brand has been an extraordinary beneficiary of the mainstream media. He's made millions from movies, mainstream Hollywood movie companies. He's made millions from mainstream book publishing companies. Even now on Google he has 6 million followers or subscribers to his YouTube channel. Well, I'm sorry, but these days anyone with 6 million followers on YouTube is making good money and YouTube is owned by Google and Google is about as mainstream a media company in the world because it's the biggest media company in the world. So it's just rings a bit phony for him to put pit himself as the little guy against the, the big mainstream media when he's part and parcel of the mainstream media. I mean, he's been on every major news network and every major talk show I can think of. Certainly in the US and the English speaking world. He has been supported and embraced and been given an extraordinarily healthy lifetime career earnings from the mainstream media. So the fact that he's now criticizing it occasionally from the platform of one mainstream media, it just doesn't hold rationally that that's why everyone else in the media is, is involved in some elaborate conspiracy to make up stuff to bring down his career. It's not making any sense at all.

And the voices, and I mean my voice along with your voice. I don't mind them using my books and my stand up to talk about my promiscuous consensual conduct in the past. What I seriously.

So again, he's, he's bringing in these straw man arguments suggesting that there are all these allegations that he's committed crimes because he was promiscuous. No one's made that allegation. There are plenty of people in the world who have been promiscuous and they don't have a growing line every day of new people alleging felonious acts. So if you're going to put out a response to try to help your brand, your reputation, your image during a crisis, you don't help yourself by bringing up things that are not a part of the main criticism. He's bringing bringing up these strawman arguments, these red herrings and answering those when that's not the issue at hand refute.

Are these very, very serious criminal allegations. Also, it's worth mentioning that there are witnesses whose evidence directly contradicts the narratives that these two mainstream media outlets are trying to construct. Apparently.

So again, he's hitting the mainstream media. That's an increasingly difficult issue to even define. What is a mainstream media? Again, Google has a capitalization much larger than NBC or the New York Times. He has a big shot on Google because he has his own show with 6 million subscribers. So even now he actually is very mainstream, even if he's not necessarily getting a huge paycheck from one TV network.

In what seems to me to be a coordinated attack.

Now, again, it's a coordinated attack. He's not dealing with the fundamental issue, he's just quickly going to it's all a conspiracy. Which, looking at the comments on his own YouTube channel does resonate with his followers. But when you're dealing with a crisis, you have to go beyond that because for starters, he can't make any Money now on YouTube because Google has demonetized him. So he can't simply appeal to conspiracy theorists. He has to appeal to people who are actually looking from a fair perspective of what's going on here. Who do we believe? What's fair? Should this person be punished in a court of law? Well, that has to work itself out. Should this person in addition be published in the court of public opinion or. Sometimes people are not punished in a court of law, but the allegations against them are so credible that they are in fact published in the punished in the court of public opinion and their careers are ruined.

I Don't want to get into this any further because of the serious nature of the allegations. But I feel like I'm being attacked.

And plainly that I feel like I'm being attacked. Poor little me. So that's not ever a good defense in a crisis communication situation to say poor little me. It's all a conspiracy. You have to put out some kind of statement that's going to ring credible to people who are not already your friends and supporters. And so far, he's really only spoken to his own support. And again, he does have a fair number of supporters.

They are working very closely together.

We are obviously working closely together. More and more conspiracy going to look.

Into this matter because it's very, very serious in the meantime.

So I will give him credit saying this is serious. I'm looking into this. I'm taking this seriously.

I want you to stay close, stay awake. But more important than any of that, if you can, please stay free. Hello there. You awake?

Okay. So all in all, a highly talented communicator. Obviously, that's why he's been so successful. But when I rate how he communicated in this particular message at the worst moment in his career, at a crisis that could not only take away his career, but his livelihood and even his freedom, I would have to give this performance an F minus because he just completely pandered to a small, narrow base of conspiracy theorists and didn't make any rational, credible arguments. And these are complex issues. He could have said something as simple as, I've heard these allegations. They are false. And I'm going to be working closely with all legal authorities, all investigators, to get this matter resolved. Now, that might not have convinced anyone of his innocence, but it wouldn't have made it worse. When you dig so deeply, as he has done, bringing up so many straw men arguments, so many red herrings, so many nonsensing and so many conspiracies, you really undermine your credibility. And that's what I think he did. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. If you have any questions, comments, agree or disagree, post them in the comment section. And again, let me state I'm not taking Russell Brand's side. I'm not taking the side of the others. That's for other people to do. I'm simply analyzing this through the prism of crisis communication skills and best practices. Thanks so much for joining.