Dissecting public apologies can be fascinating for people who work in public relations, crisis management or those with a curious interest. This is because it provides a unique insight into how people and organisations choose to take responsibility for their actions.
A public apology can reveal the values and the priorities of the apologiser and their self-awareness of what happened and how they approach the harm to the victim.
And in a PR crisis, there's almost always a victim... There's always a victim.
Additionally, the public's reaction to an apology gives us unique insight into the perceived effectiveness of the apology and the level of trust and forgiveness that's extended to the apologiser.
For example, if you were unaware, inappropriate at best to shockingly disturbing footage of the Dalai Lama was shared where you can see him asking for a young boy to "suck his tongue". Of course, this has caused tremendous anger and shock on a global scale. If you want to investigate the situation, Google it. We're more interested in the statement rather than sharing the video.
Let's dissect this apology.
In a public statement, we're always looking for the tone and the language that indicates if the person or the organisation will take or accept responsibility or deflect it.
When a statement shows a lack of accountability, it is usually riddled with red herrings using words and phrases to distract the readers intentionally.
Back to Team Dalai Lama's statement.
"A video clip has been circulating" - Whenever the first statement is about blaming the crisis on the public pushback, social media or the word viral, this means deflection.
"When a young boy asked" - Blaming the victim, deflection.
"As well as his many friends across the world, for the hurt of his words" - Words... Yep, you read that right.
Just look at the keywords used within this statement, "teases", "innocent", "playful way", and "even in public and before the cameras".
Video, social media, news coverage, history... This story has legs. We can guarantee that scrutiny will be incoming right now, and journalists and social media users will be scouring the internet to uncover more footage.
