Perfectly clear that PR best practices were adhered to in an admirably strict fashion - show beautiful pictures of apparent success on live video, bury the part where the satellite burns up until after hours on a Friday!
Apparently you know nothing about PR "best practices". No consultant worth their salt would have allowed SpaceX to handle the secondary mission failure they way they did. They made a series of classic and potentially disastrous mistakes. The best thing they could have done was address the issue head on with what information they had and then filled in further details as they were known.
To build credibility you have to admit failure. You can't just omit the bad news while focusing on the good news. You can't allow rumor and speculation to be your spokesperson. There's no way around the fact that an engine failure led to the failure of their secondary mission. Test platform or not, fully insured or not, an expensive piece of hardware became a shooting star. Someone didn't get what they paid for.
How it was handled was seriously amateurish. It made me cringe because I really want to see SpaceX (and Musk) succeed. Shit happens, but how you respond to that as an organization defines you for better or worse.
Everyone in the industry who was paying attention knew that the satellite was having problems on Tuesday. Anyone who wanted to know about it did.
The satellite burned up when it burned up. It was very probable that it was going to have a short life, but no one really knew how short until re-entry was imminent.
