It Was a Candle, Not a Wildfire

By Tanya Mannes Castaneda, APR | September 22, 2026

A public agency client once came to me convinced they were in the middle of a crisis. The day before, a resident had claimed on a local talk radio show that the City Council was “money laundering.”

The critic was implying that the council members were benefiting from a public action to move forward a development proposal — that they were somehow using their positions to enrich themselves. There was zero evidence for these statements and no details, but there was a lot of innuendo.

The City Manager said that council members were very concerned. He wanted to know if they should move aggressively to “push back hard.”

I wasn’t sure yet. I needed to know more.

Over the past six months, the resident had requested and received documents under the California Public Records Act, but nothing in those documents appeared to support that allegation. My client wanted to know where the claims were coming from.

I understood why the City Manager and Council were concerned. There are certain accusations that feel like attacks, because they are. Serious words get thrown around without evidence about public decisions. "Corruption." "Conspiracy." "Conflict of interest.” These are not just words; they are accusations of criminal activity.

To be clear, when there's real evidence behind a claim like that, it deserves a serious, direct response. What I'm talking about here is the far more common scenario: an unverified claim.

The public agency had already consulted with the city attorney, who offered to write a retraction request to the radio station.

Before we did anything, we took the time to actually look closely at what we were dealing with. We examined the clip from the radio show. According to Nielsen figures, the potential reach was around 20,000 people, of which a fraction likely heard it. This was a relatively small audience for a large metropolitan area, but it could still be significant for a serious accusation.

The next thing was to examine the context behind this statement. A local WordPress blog had run a critical story on the Council’s decision. The story itself was written carefully, without making a direct accusation, but it asked the question: "Is there a conspiracy?” The blog had only a few hundred subscribers, meaning that its reach was relatively small.

We discovered that the resident who appeared on the radio show was quoting directly from the blog but using stronger language and directing the allegations against specific council members — again, without evidence.

Finally, we examined whether the claims from the blog and radio show were gaining traction in online forums. There were very few comments, shares, and reactions and none in the last eight hours, which indicated that the claim was not being amplified. We also ran a sentiment analysis across the broader conversation to see if this claim was part of a shift in the public narrative, but sentiment trends had not changed.

The assessment was clear. This was a candle, not a wildfire.

More importantly, overreacting carries its own risk.

A public statement or a demand for a retraction can bring attention to otherwise insignificant comments. Sometimes a retraction request itself becomes news, prolonging the story by another news cycle. And people might hear about the dispute and decide to view the blog or even subscribe as a result — an example of the Streisand effect.

In light of this information, the client decided to stand down. In consultation with the city attorney, no direct response was sent, either to the radio station, the blog author or the public.

We did, however, prepare a statement to provide upon request in case someone asked about the blog or radio spot. Unsurprisingly, no one did.

The instinct to fight back hard, to make sure everyone knows the truth, is understandable. But before reacting, a public administrator or council member should ask these questions.

How big is the actual audience? Get the real number before you decide how big a response it deserves.

Is this claim gaining traction anywhere else, or dying on the vine? Check whether it's being picked up, shared, or repeated across other outlets and platforms or if it is contained to one forum.

Does responding make this bigger than it already is? Ask what audience your response would reach, compared to the audience the original claim reached on its own.

It's worth taking the time to answer these questions. When an agency is under public attack, a rush to respond is usually the bigger risk.

Some details have been changed to protect client confidentiality.