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The Public And The Media Like People To Apologise When Necessary
Business and community organisations can learn a lot by using the word 'sorry' when explaining their mistakes to the news media
The media only represent the public. They are the conduit through to the public and that public really admire organisations that can ‘sorry’ when they have to.
In my country, Australia, we had a gigantic example of this in February 2008 when then new Rudd government formally apologised to our aborigines for the way whites had treated them in the past. The words were simple, yet powerful - “For the pain, suffering and hurt of these stolen generations, their descendants, we say sorry. To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families, we say sorry. And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people, we say sorry.”
While words alone will not be enough to fix the ongoing plight of our aborigines, this gesture had an enormously positive impact on the Australian psyche, both white and black while at the same time highlighting the meanness of the previous administration in not offering that apology. Why didn’t they? For the same reason that most organisations still refuse to apologise when they get things wrong - the lawyers have moved in and convinced them that they’ll suffer financial consequences if they say ‘sorry’. That’s a load of rubbish. Even our John Howard government had received expert advice that apologising to our aborigines would not mean admitting financial liability for the current generation of whites - yet he still choose to refuse them that solace. No wonder he lost government, and his seat in Parliament.
Another example came out of America in late 2007 when Mark Zuckerberg, the boss of Facebook, apologised for breaching the privacy of his users to chase profits. Basically, his Beacon system alerted users’ friends to what they were buying on other sites like eBay. After a litany of bad press, initial silence from Zuckerberg and his PR team and Coca Cola cancelling its ads, Zuckerberg said: “We simply did a bad job with this release and I apologise for it.”
Earlier that year Ribena had to apologise to Australian and New Zealand customers for selling childrens’ drinks with less than the advertised level of Vitamin C. The Australian Managing Director John Sayers said: “We have to say sorry. We’ve messed up. We made mistakes.” The company launched a special TV campaign in both countries and, again, said sorry for what had happened. Since then, I’ve seen no negative publicity about this incident or indeed about Ribena or parent company GlaxoSmithKline.
So, saying ‘sorry’ can indeed help in a media encounter.