Reputation Radar

PR, corporate and crisis communications, sourced weekly.

ANZ Fires KPMG as Auditor After 57 Years Over a Leak Scandal

ABC News Australia / Bloomberg · Oct. 2, 2026

ANZ is ending a 57-year relationship with KPMG Australia after a whistleblower told the Australian Senate that KPMG auditors used confidential information from one audit client to help win work from others, something that client had explicitly barred. KPMG’s own review of the allegations later admitted it “lacked the necessary rigour required,” and the fallout has already cost the firm its CEO, its audit chief, roughly 400 jobs, and now its largest banking client; Lendlease and Macquarie made the same move earlier this year. This story hasn’t gotten much US coverage, but the lesson travels: when your internal investigation into a problem turns out to be as sloppy as the problem itself, every client watching has to wonder what else you looked at that wasn’t real.

A Canadian Brewery Fired Its Co-Owner Over a T-Shirt. The Statement Came the Next Day.

CTV News Vancouver Island / Victoria News · Oct. 1, 2026

A co-owner of Sooke Brewing Company wore a shirt reading “show me the evidence” on Canada’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, a day set aside to honor residential school survivors and the children who died in that system. The photo spread fast, and so did calls to boycott. Within a day, the brewery closed its doors, parted ways with the co-owner, and said plainly that “the message displayed on that shirt does not reflect the values of Sooke Brewing Company.” Like the ANZ story, this one hasn’t traveled much in US media, but the response is worth studying anywhere: no workshopped language, no hedging on whether it mattered, just a fast decision and a short, direct statement.

University of Michigan Pulls Its Own Pilot Program After Losing Control of the Story

Inside Higher Ed / The Detroit News · Sept. 30, 2026

Michigan announced in August that first-semester grades for incoming students would show as pass/no-credit instead of letter grades, aimed at easing the mental health strain of a student’s first college semester. A month later, university president Domenico Grasso paused the pilot, saying “the misconceptions and questions raised about the program put the pilot’s success at risk” and that students were being unfairly portrayed as “coddled or unprepared.” Notice what he didn’t say: that the program itself was flawed. He said the public story around it was. Rolling out a sensitive change without a plan for how it would be described handed critics the first word, and the first word is usually the one that sticks.

DoorDash: “We Screwed Up.” Then It Paid $131.5 Million to Prove It.

ABC7 New York / The Hill · Sept. 22-23, 2026

DoorDash agreed to pay $131.5 million to roughly 260,000 New York City delivery workers after a 2023 change to its payment formula quietly excluded certain trip time from pay calculations, something city investigators found had dropped average tips from $3.66 a delivery to 76 cents. Rather than blaming the algorithm or hedging on intent, the company’s statement was blunt: “Simply put, we screwed up. Our mistakes meant some Dashers were underpaid or paid late.” No qualifier about whether it was deliberate, no minimizing language, just the admission and a number attached to it. An apology backed by a real payout does more credibility work than the words alone ever could.

Arch Manning Laughed at an AI Video of a Coach Hitting a Reporter. He Apologized a Day Later.

NBC News / CBS Austin · Sept. 15-16, 2026

At a press conference, Texas quarterback Arch Manning laughed off questions about an AI-generated video showing his head coach slapping ESPN reporter Holly Rowe, calling it “hilarious” and “a good one.” Overnight the reaction turned, and the next day Manning posted a direct apology: “I made an insensitive comment about an AI video. There is nothing funny about it,” adding he’d personally apologized to Rowe and would “be more thoughtful going forward.” No excuse about being caught off guard, no “if anyone was offended.” Just what he got wrong and what he’d do differently, delivered before the story had two full days to grow.