Reputation Radar

PR, corporate and crisis communications, sourced weekly.

Adidas Apologizes After an Ad Meant to Be Inclusive Became a Political Flashpoint

Al Arabiya English · Sept. 8, 2026

Adidas Arabia apologized and pulled a campaign promoting the brand’s Single Shoe service, a line designed for people who need only one shoe, including amputees, after the ad’s casting of a former Israeli soldier who lost a leg in military service drew boycott calls across the region. The company said in its statement that it recognized the image had “raised concerns and strong reactions” and that causing offense was never the intent. The underlying product idea, accessible footwear for people with limb differences, wasn’t what drew the criticism; who was cast to represent it was. It’s a reminder that a campaign’s message and its casting are judged separately, and a choice that seems incidental to the creative team can become the entire story to everyone else.

The NBA’s Record Fine Against the Clippers Came With a Pointed Message About Cooperation

ESPN · Sept. 3, 2026

The NBA hit the Los Angeles Clippers with the largest penalty in league history, a $30 million fine, the loss of five future first-round draft picks, and a one-year suspension for owner Steve Ballmer, after a nearly yearlong investigation found the team had circumvented the salary cap to pay Kawhi Leonard. The investigators’ report went further than the findings themselves, noting the team and its lawyers had at times operated in an “adversarial or obfuscatory manner that slowed investigators’ ability to gather the facts.” Two Clippers executives cooperated very differently, one was described as open and consistent across interviews, while the other reportedly made statements inconsistent with the record and blamed subordinates. The size of the penalty reflects the violation, but the pointed language about cooperation is a reminder that how an organization behaves during an investigation becomes part of the record right alongside what the investigation actually finds.

Fox News Cut Ties With Maria Bartiromo. It Didn’t Say Why.

NBC News / NPR · Sept. 3-4, 2026

Fox News abruptly announced it was parting ways with Maria Bartiromo after more than twelve years, immediately renaming her flagship morning show and reassigning her other programs to rotating hosts. The network’s entire public statement was two sentences thanking her for her work, with no explanation for the timing or the decision. That vacuum was filled almost immediately: her attorney publicly disputed characterizations that she had been fired, while coverage noted her increasingly close association with the network’s political coverage had made her a bigger presence than the shows she hosted. When a company says nothing about why a visible departure happened, it doesn’t make the story go away, it just hands the explanation to everyone except the company.

When Your Own Employees Use Your Mission Statement Against You

Washington Post / Fortune · Sept. 8-9, 2026

Anthropic was founded specifically as a safety-first alternative to more aggressive AI labs, and this week, a former researcher used that same framing to make his resignation land harder. Jacob Coxon, who worked at both OpenAI and Anthropic, said publicly that both companies understand the existential risks of the technology they’re building but are racing ahead anyway, and a current Anthropic employee backed up his concerns the same day. For a company built on almost any other value proposition, this would read as a standard internal disagreement. For a company whose entire brand is safety, a safety researcher’s public dissent doesn’t look like a dispute, it looks like the company failing to live up to the one thing it promised.