I think Thomas and I are thinking less "Probability that this will kill the BBB" and more "How many tens of thousands of dollars of PR firm time would produce demonstrably less press hits than this event will."
It's that and the "let's punch ourselves in the face" aspect of taking a story that you want to minimize, and deciding months later when it has completely blown over to send it aloft in a gigantic fusillade of skyrockets and roman candles. "PLEASE, ENTIRE MAINSTREAM MEDIA, PLEASE REVIVE THIS ABSOLUTELY TOXIC STORY. And if you could, could you maybe mix in a David vs. Goliath element to it this time?"
Having been in the room with PR people during (supposed) crises in the past: every single one of them would tell you not to do what BBB just did here.
I think the BBB has already sustained the fatal wound, it will just take a time-frame of decades for it to play out. Their service means nothing to most of the generation that grew up on the internet. Those people tend to utilize several key data points (trusted blogger, Amazon Review, a forum, Yelp, Urbanspoon) to make decisions about businesses and products.
Where those that are rapidly becoming elderly, grew up in a generation that had to rely on these data aggregation and trust business entities. As those people become less and less of a consumer force via attrition, entities like the BBB in their current form will cease to exist. I think they sense it and are selling that last thing that they had (their credibility) in the death throws. All efforts to adapt their model has thus-far failed.
