How do you respond to a viral negative news story?

A viral negative story has two clocks. The first is the immediate news cycle, where the response is driven by the comms team and counsel. The second is the durable digital record, which is where we work. While the comms team handles the press, we run a same-day diagnostic on what is driving the virality (which outlets, which social accounts, which sources the AI engines are starting to weight), stand up daily AIQ topics on the specific narrative threads, and produce authoritative content on owned properties (corporate site, executive bio pages, fact pages) that the engines can cite. The second-day story is almost always more important than the first-day story for digital reputation purposes, because it sets the narrative that the AI engines absorb. The work in the first 72 hours determines what stakeholders find six months later.