[debt]

They definitely did go into full PR mode after they lost signal to the drone ship. But I think they did that in part because this launch had so many moving parts that if someone had just tuned in to that moment and seen a massive rocket exploding against the drone ship they may have thought that the launch had fail.

And considering that the core booster landing on the drone ship was a mere side benefit of the overall launch it was probably the best thing to do.

[rphlx]

They are clearly in an unenviable position but I think they would have come off better with a more honest, direct acknowledgement of the failure of a tertiary objective, rather than that "oh noes, might derail the emotive hype-train, let's awkwardly pretend we don't know what happened and just hope the audience forgets", which is fairly patronizing and not particularly effective at achieving its intended goal. An awkward, ineffective cover-up is worse than just telling the truth and moving on.