How Celebrities Should Publicly Apologize

Maddie Abuyuan / HuffPost; C Flanigan / Getty Images The Art Of The Public Apology Experts explain why apologizing can be so difficult — and how “canceled” celebrities could do it more effectively. Make a real apology and take accountability for your actions” and “YOU SHOULDVE LISTENED TO THE PR TEAM GIRL.” The bad apology often contains some of the following phrases: “I’m sorry if you were offended,” “as a father of daughters,” “I don’t have a racist bone in my body,” “this doesn’t reflect who I am,” “I did not intend to hurt anyone.” These appear so frequently that writers Marjorie Ingall and Susan McCarthy compiled many of them into bingo cards on their site, SorryWatch, where they analyze a variety of apologies in the news and in history — often bad ones, but occasionally good ones, too. Therefore, as Yung said, on a basic level, “It’s very important just to make sure that you say the simple phrase, ‘I’m sorry, period.’ I think a lot of times, folks will kind of jump into, not necessarily excuses, but just trying to find reasons or justification for why they acted that way in the first place.” In addition, an apology should contain a clear statement “that you intend to do things differently either the next time or just in the future,” she said. For instance, Torossian said it’s often incumbent upon the public figure to apologize swiftly “if they’re being killed in the media every day” for not apologizing. “I don’t think somebody three years from now is gonna remember that.” For therapists, they say timing may matter less than whether the person expresses a genuine apology.