Last week, my friend, Len Gutman, commented positively about a public apology US Airways issued to its flight attendants about a memo sent to them. The memo told female attendants to get out of the aisle if a Hindu Swami was boarding the plane. Angry workers protested, claiming prejudice toward women.

I agree that US Airways did the right thing. Instead of hiding from the media, their PR person did interviews apologizing. “We made a mistake,” said Elise Eberwein. “We could have sent a memo that was written much better.”

It’s tough enough for some people to admit mistakes to friends, family or colleagues. There’s no way you could get them to apologize to the world. Yes, it’s hard for us to admit we’re wrong, but usually it’s the smartest thing to do. As I tell my media training clients, the sooner you admit your mistake and apologize, the more quickly reporters lose interest and move on to new territory. When you stonewall, you turn what might have been a one or two day story into an ongoing saga.

Apologizing also lets you tell your side of the story, not to excuse yourself from blame, but to explain more about how it happened. I read a good example of that in the Arizona Republic today. A man committed murder after court errors and cracks in the system allowed him to escape from justice seven times for earlier crimes such as burglary and trespassing.

Much of the time, judges won’t comment to the media. This time one of the city judges who had encountered the criminal did. “When we make a mistake, we don’t try to hide it,” Judge Tom Brady said. He went on to say that his office is “horrified” at what happened and that clerk who made the mistake is “devastated.”

Then he explained more about what his court is up against: His caseload has increased 49 percent over the past four years, while his staff has gotten smaller. Maybe he helped educate the public a little bit about what’s happening to our judicial system.

Still, some people and organizations just can’t make themselves admit guilt. What if Bill Clinton had immediately come clean about Monica Lewinsky and said he was sorry for his transgression? What if Richard Nixon had admitted he knew about Watergate and asked forgiveness from the American people? History might have turned out very differently.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 16th, 2007 at 12:06 am and is filed under Media Training, Mistakes in the Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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