Oct. 13, 2025
Navigating the Noise: A PR Pro's Guide to Combating Misinformation
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That Solo Life, Episode 317: Navigating the Noise: A PR Pro's Guide to Combating MisinformationEpisode Summary
In an era where online falsehoods can spread like wildfire, how can communications professionals protect their clients and their own brands? Hosts Karen Swim and Michelle Kane tackle the critical issue of misinformation and disinformation head-on. Triggered by a report revealing that nearly 45% of social media posts about the Cracker Barrel logo controversy were from bots, this episode explores the modern PR pro's responsibility in a world of digital deception. Karen and Michelle discuss the importance of fact-checking before reacting, the professional imperative to guide clients through online scams and brand misrepresentation, and why every communicator must become a savvy digital detective. Learn practical tips for verifying information, strategies for equipping audiences with the truth, and why taking a moment to "dig deep" is the most powerful tool in your communications arsenal.
Episode Highlights- [01:45] The astonishing statistic that 44.5% of posts on X about the Cracker Barrel logo were from potential bots, highlighting the scale of online disinformation.
- [03:08] The "check your rage" rule: Why it's crucial for comms pros to pause and verify facts before sharing or commenting on hot-button issues.
- [04:41] Personal responsibility for your brand: Balancing timely commentary with the need for accuracy and skepticism.
- [05:24] The importance of continuous professional development in spotting fake images, videos, and out-of-context quotes.
- [06:52] A proactive approach for brands: Equipping your audience with tools to identify official communications and avoid scams.
- [07:41] The rise of sophisticated job scams on trusted platforms like LinkedIn and how to protect yourself and your clients.
- [09:51] The defensive role of a PR pro: Actively monitoring for brand misrepresentation and owning the narrative to squash falsehoods quickly.
- [11:47] The final word of advice for navigating online interactions: Always "dig deep" before trusting information or individuals you encounter on the internet.
- PR Daily Article on Cracker Barrel Bot Activity (Note: Specific article link not provided in audio)
- FactCheck.org - A nonpartisan, nonprofit project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center.
- PRSA Voices for Everyone - Resources for combating misinformation and disinformation.
That Solo Life is a podcast created for public relations, communication, and marketing professionals who work as independent and small practitioners. Hosted by Karen Swim, APR, founder of Words For Hire and President of Solo PR, and Michelle Kane, Principal of Voice Matters, the show delivers expert insights, encouragement, and advice for solo PR pros navigating today’s dynamic professional landscape.
Did this episode resonate with you? Don't keep it to yourself! Share it with a fellow solo pro who needs to hear it. For more resources, community, and support on your solo journey, visit us at soloprpro.com. Be sure to subscribe to "That Solo Life" on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode, and leave us a review—we'd love to hear from you
Navigating the Noise: A PR Pro's Guide to Combating Misinformation
Michelle Kane (00:12):
Thank you for joining us for this episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves, people like me, Michelle Kane, with Voice Matters, and my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro, the group you should belong to if you're a solo. For real. Hey Karen, how are you?
Karen Swim, APR (00:29):
Hi, Michelle. I am good. I am happy for a fresh start to the week, and yeah, happy for Monday, believe it or not. How are you doing?
Michelle Kane (00:40):
Yeah, you know what? As Mondays go, I'll take it. I'll take it. Yeah.
Karen Swim, APR (00:44):
Last week was
Michelle Kane (00:44):
Karen Swim, APR (00:45):
A little rough. Our solo PR Pro website got caught up in an outage that lasted all day. So our site was down while I was in the midst of making a good change for solos and trying to fix some things. And it was just so frustrating. But it wasn't just us. It was something that happened, and our poor hosting provider had thousands of clients that were impacted, and there were many more, but people may not have realized. I realized that everybody doesn't check their website all the time. So yeah, it was not a fun week, but we got it sorted and got back up and running and got some of the things sorted out. So we're back. And that kind of segues into our topic today.
Michelle Kane (01:37):
Yeah, I mean, we know right now you and I we're real.
(01:42):
We're really talking. It's real, but it seems, and I know this is going to sound like old news, but even more than ever, we really need to pay attention to the things we see online. Don't believe most things. No, that's not true. But I mean, you and I were both just amazed at the report and PR daily that we saw this morning that that whole kerfuffle over the Cracker Barrel rebrand social analytics company, peak Metrics, has found that 44.5% of posts on X about the Cracker Barrel logo in the 24 hours after the story broke were bots, or could be bots. Are we shocked? Are we shocked? We're not shocked
Karen Swim, APR (02:34):
We're particularly not shocked that that happened on X. And as we all know, social media platforms, they abandoned fact checking and really joining the fight againstmis-, mal and disinformation, which is unfortunate because we need it now more than ever.
Michelle Kane (02:54):
Yes, agree, agree. And even if it started on X, I mean, we all see the same information then bleed throughout, run their course throughout all the different platforms. And so it's like even before you share something now, more than ever it would appear. Check the facts, check your rage before you hit that button and talk to me as well. And we just really have to be careful, especially as comms pros really have to take that extra time. And it's not really that much of a time investment, really. Just wait. It's okay. You'd rather be late than, right.
Karen Swim, APR (03:43):
Yeah.
Michelle Kane (03:46):
Late and right,
Karen Swim, APR (03:46):
There are two pieces to this for communicators, there's a personal piece where I see people immediately respond to some hot topic and they're blogging about it or doing a live and they're going on their social media channels, and that's great news jacking and it amps up your visibility, particularly when it's in your area of expertise. However, as communication pros for our personal branding, I think that we also have a personal responsibility to make sure that we're following the same practices that we preach to our audience. And so I tend to always take a more cautious approach, which has worked to my downfall. So I'm not advising that everyone should be as cautious as I am, but I tend to have a healthy dose of skepticism about everything. I think anything could potentially not be true. So if I don't have the time to fully research it, I sometimes just don't comment on things or
(04:48):
Bring it up. But there's factcheck.org, which is a good place to go, and I would encourage everybody to check out the Voices4Everyone the PRSA site because it's not only available to members and use some of those resources, take the quizzes, learn how to spot mis-, mal- and disinformation. I think that as communicators, this is an area of professional development that we should continue to invest in that helps us to be sharper to spot things. Don't believe damage, don't believe every video don't see a single quote taken out of context. We have to take that breath and make sure that we are doing all of the things that we want people to do for us. Right,
Michelle Kane (05:40):
Right. Agree. Agree. I mean, I can even think a couple of weeks ago in the aftermath of the Jimmy Kimmel thing, there was a video going around allegedly of him speaking. And first of all, it didn't come from an official channel, meaning it didn't seem to come from his people per se. And right away it seemed a little choppy and it started on him speaking, but then it went to all this B roll. And I'm like, this isn't from him.
Karen Swim, APR (06:10):
No.
Michelle Kane (06:11):
Yeah, we may all say, yay, Jimmy, we agree, and yes, we'd love to see you saying this so that feels good and you want to feel good and be all right. But the first time I watched it, I was like, yeah, this isn't for him.
Karen Swim, APR (06:28):
And I think
Michelle Kane (06:30):
It's not easy.
Karen Swim, APR (06:31):
It is very easy. And YouTube is now rife with fake videos. People are capitalizing on someone else's popularity and taking AI stuff and recreating and repurposing and putting it on their channel. It's the person. So we really have to be aware. And as part of our job, on behalf of our organizations and clients, I think that it's really important that we equip our audiences with truth and with tools to understand what really came from the brand and what doesn't. And so we see big brands do this all the time. You'll get emails from financial institutions saying, there's a lot of scams. Here's how to understand if that email, if that message really came from us. I think that as communicators, we can also do that same thing. We can let people know,
(07:34):
If you see something about our brand, it will come from these places. If you want to fact check, here's how you do it. Because I read over the weekend about a LinkedIn job scam, and we all trust LinkedIn as a professional site, but people were posting fake jobs from real organizations and people actually got scammed out of money. These are educated professional people. And so we want to assume, I think a lot of us, especially solos, because we deal with a lot of these things and we've had to learn a lot of areas on our own, we're small agencies, but a lot of people take it for granted that everyone knows this. No one would ever spend money or cash a check that came to them and then send the money through a wire transfer somewhere else. Guess what? Everyone does not know that. So as we look at our jobs as communicators and protecting reputation, again, I think it's important that we allow, we make sure that information exists, preferably on the client's website, and then you can put that on their social channels. Here's our official email addresses. If you don't get an email from us from this address, it's not us. Here is where we post jobs, double check. And I think for us, if you're in that position, if you're looking for a job, call the actual company and verify. Because
(09:09):
When calls were placed to these actual companies, they're like, we have reported this and we have had it taken down. So they were aware of the scam, but people weren't doing their due diligence and going through an interview process and interacting with fake recruiters. It's just the amount of fraud and identity theft, yes, it happens on the internet, is mind blowing. And it's honestly exhausting to keep up with.
Michelle Kane (09:42):
It really is. And that's another layer for us, our comms as comms pros. And for in-house as well. You've got to keep your eyes on everything. Check all the social channels, see how your brand is being mentioned. If your brand is being misrepresented by someone not, you can be the first line of defense in that and just make sure you own the story and that you're quick to squash it and say, not us. This is not us.
Karen Swim, APR (10:12):
Because it can really damage a reputation. You can have people that are conducting false business under your name and then negative reviews get out and it's not even you, your brand. It's frightening the ways that businesses really have to guard against this era of
Michelle Kane (10:35):
Misinformation. Yeah, that's so true. It's so true. And we've seen it with the series Catfish, which apparently is going off the air.
Karen Swim, APR (10:43):
Yes.
Michelle Kane (10:45):
But there's the article you found someone, the reporter was saying how it was a good training ground for her.
Karen Swim, APR (10:52):
I think if you grew up in a certain age and you watched Catfish at any point, we did learn a lot from that. We learned how not to trust everything that is online. We learned that people showing up in your dms might not be who they said they were. We learned to be wary. I think that that's a skill that we need to drill deep into older generations who absolutely seem to fall prey to these things as well as younger generations coming up. Everything is not true.
Michelle Kane (11:24):
Right? A hundred percent. A hundred percent. I will say "90 Day Fiance" can bring you a little bit of that education as well.
Karen Swim, APR (11:31):
I have heard that that's not a show I watch. I have a lot of friends who watch that show, but
Michelle Kane (11:37):
Yeah, I've kind of fallen away from it. But it's like that is not that person. What is wrong with you?
Karen Swim, APR (11:47):
Dig deep is what I say. Exactly. Really dig deep before you embark on a romantic or even a friendship or any kind personal relationship with somebody that you meet on the internet because it's so easy to fake a persona.
Michelle Kane (12:04):
Absolutely. Absolutely. I love that. That's a great last word. Dig deep. Take a beat, take a breath. It's okay. You don't have to respond to something instantaneously. Well, we hope you've gotten value out of our time together today. If you did, please let us know. Not that we're so needy, but we like to hear from you guys. Talk to us@solopro.com and please do share this around if it was valuable to you, which we hope it was. And until next time, thanks for listening to "That Solo Life."
Transcribing live conversations can be tricky so please be forgiving of any typos or errors that you find. Love something here and want to share? Great, please read the notes at the end. Enjoy!
You are more than welcome to share the transcript (up to 500 words) in media articles (e.g., PR News, O’Dwyers), on your personal website, in a non-commercial article or blog post (e.g., Substack), and/or on a personal social media account for non-commercial purposes, provided that you include attribution to “That Solo Life” and link back to the soloprpro/podcast URL. For the sake of clarity, media outlets with advertising models are permitted to use excerpts from the transcript per the above.
But please note that no one is authorized to copy any portion of the podcast content or use That Solo Life’s name, image or likeness for any commercial purpose or use, including without limitation inclusion in any books, e-books, book summaries or synopses, or on a commercial website or social media site (e.g., Facebook, X, Instagram, etc.) that offers or promotes your or another’s products or services.
Got questions? Email us at info@soloprpro.com.
Michelle Kane (00:12):
Thank you for joining us for this episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves, people like me, Michelle Kane, with Voice Matters, and my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro, the group you should belong to if you're a solo. For real. Hey Karen, how are you?
Karen Swim, APR (00:29):
Hi, Michelle. I am good. I am happy for a fresh start to the week, and yeah, happy for Monday, believe it or not. How are you doing?
Michelle Kane (00:40):
Yeah, you know what? As Mondays go, I'll take it. I'll take it. Yeah.
Karen Swim, APR (00:44):
Last week was
Michelle Kane (00:44):
Karen Swim, APR (00:45):
A little rough. Our solo PR Pro website got caught up in an outage that lasted all day. So our site was down while I was in the midst of making a good change for solos and trying to fix some things. And it was just so frustrating. But it wasn't just us. It was something that happened, and our poor hosting provider had thousands of clients that were impacted, and there were many more, but people may not have realized. I realized that everybody doesn't check their website all the time. So yeah, it was not a fun week, but we got it sorted and got back up and running and got some of the things sorted out. So we're back. And that kind of segues into our topic today.
Michelle Kane (01:37):
Yeah, I mean, we know right now you and I we're real.
(01:42):
We're really talking. It's real, but it seems, and I know this is going to sound like old news, but even more than ever, we really need to pay attention to the things we see online. Don't believe most things. No, that's not true. But I mean, you and I were both just amazed at the report and PR daily that we saw this morning that that whole kerfuffle over the Cracker Barrel rebrand social analytics company, peak Metrics, has found that 44.5% of posts on X about the Cracker Barrel logo in the 24 hours after the story broke were bots, or could be bots. Are we shocked? Are we shocked? We're not shocked
Karen Swim, APR (02:34):
We're particularly not shocked that that happened on X. And as we all know, social media platforms, they abandoned fact checking and really joining the fight againstmis-, mal and disinformation, which is unfortunate because we need it now more than ever.
Michelle Kane (02:54):
Yes, agree, agree. And even if it started on X, I mean, we all see the same information then bleed throughout, run their course throughout all the different platforms. And so it's like even before you share something now, more than ever it would appear. Check the facts, check your rage before you hit that button and talk to me as well. And we just really have to be careful, especially as comms pros really have to take that extra time. And it's not really that much of a time investment, really. Just wait. It's okay. You'd rather be late than, right.
Karen Swim, APR (03:43):
Yeah.
Michelle Kane (03:46):
Late and right,
Karen Swim, APR (03:46):
There are two pieces to this for communicators, there's a personal piece where I see people immediately respond to some hot topic and they're blogging about it or doing a live and they're going on their social media channels, and that's great news jacking and it amps up your visibility, particularly when it's in your area of expertise. However, as communication pros for our personal branding, I think that we also have a personal responsibility to make sure that we're following the same practices that we preach to our audience. And so I tend to always take a more cautious approach, which has worked to my downfall. So I'm not advising that everyone should be as cautious as I am, but I tend to have a healthy dose of skepticism about everything. I think anything could potentially not be true. So if I don't have the time to fully research it, I sometimes just don't comment on things or
(04:48):
Bring it up. But there's factcheck.org, which is a good place to go, and I would encourage everybody to check out the Voices4Everyone the PRSA site because it's not only available to members and use some of those resources, take the quizzes, learn how to spot mis-, mal- and disinformation. I think that as communicators, this is an area of professional development that we should continue to invest in that helps us to be sharper to spot things. Don't believe damage, don't believe every video don't see a single quote taken out of context. We have to take that breath and make sure that we are doing all of the things that we want people to do for us. Right,
Michelle Kane (05:40):
Right. Agree. Agree. I mean, I can even think a couple of weeks ago in the aftermath of the Jimmy Kimmel thing, there was a video going around allegedly of him speaking. And first of all, it didn't come from an official channel, meaning it didn't seem to come from his people per se. And right away it seemed a little choppy and it started on him speaking, but then it went to all this B roll. And I'm like, this isn't from him.
Karen Swim, APR (06:10):
No.
Michelle Kane (06:11):
Yeah, we may all say, yay, Jimmy, we agree, and yes, we'd love to see you saying this so that feels good and you want to feel good and be all right. But the first time I watched it, I was like, yeah, this isn't for him.
Karen Swim, APR (06:28):
And I think
Michelle Kane (06:30):
It's not easy.
Karen Swim, APR (06:31):
It is very easy. And YouTube is now rife with fake videos. People are capitalizing on someone else's popularity and taking AI stuff and recreating and repurposing and putting it on their channel. It's the person. So we really have to be aware. And as part of our job, on behalf of our organizations and clients, I think that it's really important that we equip our audiences with truth and with tools to understand what really came from the brand and what doesn't. And so we see big brands do this all the time. You'll get emails from financial institutions saying, there's a lot of scams. Here's how to understand if that email, if that message really came from us. I think that as communicators, we can also do that same thing. We can let people know,
(07:34):
If you see something about our brand, it will come from these places. If you want to fact check, here's how you do it. Because I read over the weekend about a LinkedIn job scam, and we all trust LinkedIn as a professional site, but people were posting fake jobs from real organizations and people actually got scammed out of money. These are educated professional people. And so we want to assume, I think a lot of us, especially solos, because we deal with a lot of these things and we've had to learn a lot of areas on our own, we're small agencies, but a lot of people take it for granted that everyone knows this. No one would ever spend money or cash a check that came to them and then send the money through a wire transfer somewhere else. Guess what? Everyone does not know that. So as we look at our jobs as communicators and protecting reputation, again, I think it's important that we allow, we make sure that information exists, preferably on the client's website, and then you can put that on their social channels. Here's our official email addresses. If you don't get an email from us from this address, it's not us. Here is where we post jobs, double check. And I think for us, if you're in that position, if you're looking for a job, call the actual company and verify. Because
(09:09):
When calls were placed to these actual companies, they're like, we have reported this and we have had it taken down. So they were aware of the scam, but people weren't doing their due diligence and going through an interview process and interacting with fake recruiters. It's just the amount of fraud and identity theft, yes, it happens on the internet, is mind blowing. And it's honestly exhausting to keep up with.
Michelle Kane (09:42):
It really is. And that's another layer for us, our comms as comms pros. And for in-house as well. You've got to keep your eyes on everything. Check all the social channels, see how your brand is being mentioned. If your brand is being misrepresented by someone not, you can be the first line of defense in that and just make sure you own the story and that you're quick to squash it and say, not us. This is not us.
Karen Swim, APR (10:12):
Because it can really damage a reputation. You can have people that are conducting false business under your name and then negative reviews get out and it's not even you, your brand. It's frightening the ways that businesses really have to guard against this era of
Michelle Kane (10:35):
Misinformation. Yeah, that's so true. It's so true. And we've seen it with the series Catfish, which apparently is going off the air.
Karen Swim, APR (10:43):
Yes.
Michelle Kane (10:45):
But there's the article you found someone, the reporter was saying how it was a good training ground for her.
Karen Swim, APR (10:52):
I think if you grew up in a certain age and you watched Catfish at any point, we did learn a lot from that. We learned how not to trust everything that is online. We learned that people showing up in your dms might not be who they said they were. We learned to be wary. I think that that's a skill that we need to drill deep into older generations who absolutely seem to fall prey to these things as well as younger generations coming up. Everything is not true.
Michelle Kane (11:24):
Right? A hundred percent. A hundred percent. I will say "90 Day Fiance" can bring you a little bit of that education as well.
Karen Swim, APR (11:31):
I have heard that that's not a show I watch. I have a lot of friends who watch that show, but
Michelle Kane (11:37):
Yeah, I've kind of fallen away from it. But it's like that is not that person. What is wrong with you?
Karen Swim, APR (11:47):
Dig deep is what I say. Exactly. Really dig deep before you embark on a romantic or even a friendship or any kind personal relationship with somebody that you meet on the internet because it's so easy to fake a persona.
Michelle Kane (12:04):
Absolutely. Absolutely. I love that. That's a great last word. Dig deep. Take a beat, take a breath. It's okay. You don't have to respond to something instantaneously. Well, we hope you've gotten value out of our time together today. If you did, please let us know. Not that we're so needy, but we like to hear from you guys. Talk to us@solopro.com and please do share this around if it was valuable to you, which we hope it was. And until next time, thanks for listening to "That Solo Life."
Transcribing live conversations can be tricky so please be forgiving of any typos or errors that you find. Love something here and want to share? Great, please read the notes at the end. Enjoy!
You are more than welcome to share the transcript (up to 500 words) in media articles (e.g., PR News, O’Dwyers), on your personal website, in a non-commercial article or blog post (e.g., Substack), and/or on a personal social media account for non-commercial purposes, provided that you include attribution to “That Solo Life” and link back to the soloprpro/podcast URL. For the sake of clarity, media outlets with advertising models are permitted to use excerpts from the transcript per the above.
But please note that no one is authorized to copy any portion of the podcast content or use That Solo Life’s name, image or likeness for any commercial purpose or use, including without limitation inclusion in any books, e-books, book summaries or synopses, or on a commercial website or social media site (e.g., Facebook, X, Instagram, etc.) that offers or promotes your or another’s products or services.
Got questions? Email us at info@soloprpro.com.