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Hello, and welcome to this month’s Reputation Digest, where Fire on the Hill delivers a run-down of the latest stories making waves in the communications sector. This month Katy Perry goes to space, Toby Carvery chop down a beloved tree, and chaos takes hold at the Pentagon.
Katy Perry dragged back down to Earth
A group of six women, including U.S. pop star Katy Perry, took part in a controversial 11-minute expedition to space on April 14th. Hailed as the first ‘all-female crew’ to fly into space since 1963, Perry was joined by a former NASA rocket scientist, a bioastronautics expert, two U.S. journalists, and a film producer.
One of these journalists just happened to be Lauren Sánchez, fiancée of Jeff Bezos, who owns the Blue Origin rocket and funded the expedition.
While in Space, Perry revealed the setlist of her next tour, sang ‘What a Wonderful World’, held up a single daisy (a nod to her four-year-old daughter), and then proceeded to kiss the earth after the shuttle landed.
What was meant to be an empowering moment for women ended up falling flat. For many, the trip overshadowed real women in science and space who earned their place through years of work, and the skin-tight designer space suits added to the sense of inauthenticity.
Social media users were also quick to label Perry and the other passengers as ‘out of touch’ and actresses Olivia Munn and Emily Ratajkowski weighed in, branding the exercise “gluttonous” and “disgusting”. The environmental impact of the trip, which reportedly released more emissions than the entirety of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, has also been criticized.
This is one of a series of recent PR missteps for Perry and just goes to show attempts to frame an event as progressive can easily backfire when the reality doesn’t match up.
Toby Carvery chops down beloved tree
Toby Carvery, a UK chain restaurant known for its buffet-style roast dinners, has landed in hot water after cutting down an ancient tree located on a property in Enfield, North London. The tree, with a girth of six meters, was a nationally significant oak listed on the Woodland Trust’s ancient tree inventory and was believed to be over 500 years old.
According to Toby Carvery, the tree was mostly dead and posed a significant danger to the general public. They reportedly received advice from contractors, who said “the split and dead wood posed a serious health and safety risk”.
However, the council disputes this, branding the felling an ‘outrage’ and claiming that the tree was alive and well when checked by a team of experts in December.
Local outcry has been significant, with residents mourning the loss of the tree. Hundreds of people gathered on Easter Sunday to protest the felling, with many residents highlighting that the tree was an irreplaceable habitat for many different species, as well as part of the area’s cultural heritage.
Toby Carvery’s owner has apologized over the upset caused, but for many, this is too little, too late.
Signalgate 2.0
In a significant blow to the reputation of Trump’s administration, at the end of March, Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg was added to a Signal group chat about plans for U.S. strikes in Yemen by Mike Waltz, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser. In particular, the chat contained information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.
This breach is one unlike any seen before – a journalist being added to a top-secret discussion of military plans by some of the highest-ranking officials in the U.S. Unsurprisingly, many questions have been raised. Why was this discussion taking place on Signal in the first place? How did no one notice that an unknown contact was in the chat?
Just as the outrage began to die down, the New York Times reported on the existence of a second Signal group containing sensitive information. Created by Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, the chat included his wife, brother and personal lawyer and contained information on the flight schedules of the U.S. bombers. Even more alarmingly, Hegseth used his private phone, rather than his government one, to access the Signal chat.
This second scandal has turned even more scrutiny towards the senior members of Trump’s entourage. John Ullyot, who left the department last week, wrote an opinion essay for Politico claiming that the Pentagon “is in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership” and calling for Trump to remove him.
Trump’s presidency has been tumultuous in many ways, but for a leader so focused on national security, these leaks certainly are not a good look.
