Hateful Communication and Faux Apology

Jeremy Clarkson and Meghan Markle

Sometimes we know in the moment that we’re thinking of doing, are beginning to do or are in deep of the midst of doing, is morally and culturally wrong. Yet we decide to do it anyway because it feels great.

The impulse, too powerful to want to resist.

That behavior, as we intend, often damages people and situations. In some, but not all instances, our reputation and our lives suffer for it. When we insincerely try to correct the problems created, additional fallout happens.

Thus is the case of Jeremy Clarkson, who, due to his visceral contempt for Meghan Markle, boorishly communicated ugliness about her in an public manner in his column in The Sun.

Once the blowback became known to him, Clarkson offered up on his social media a surprisingly weak mea culpa.

“Oh dear. I’ve rather put my foot in it,” Clarkson tweeted. “In a column I wrote about Meghan, I made a clumsy reference to a scene in Game of Thrones and this has gone down badly with a great many people. I’m horrified to have caused so much hurt and I shall be more careful in future.”

“Clumsy” is how he chose to label his words and the imagery created and published. It can be debated whether “clumsy” is honest self assessment. In his admittance, the absence of an apology seems notable.

“Clarkson has once again shown what a liability he can be with his walking clickbait-style social commentary,” says Andy Barr, co-founder and co-owner of 10 Yetis, a UK public relations agency.

“It’s clear that he will have received what is known in the industry as a triple bollocking from The Firm, his bosses at the Sun and, more likely than not, his major pay masters at Amazon.”

Barr was also not impressed with Clarkson’s swing-and-miss remorse.

“His apology on Twitter is half-hearted at best and I would speculate that his instruction to do so came from Camilla's ‘people’ after he was pictured attending a boozy lunch with her and others, which could make it appear as though he was simply acting on her instruction, which was clearly not the case.”

Clarkson may believe or hope the worst is now behind him. He doesn’t realize the hard road may have just begun, Barr says.

“If he upgrades his apology from half-hearted to whole-hearted, it will most likely be because of pressure from Amazon where ‘Clarkson's Farm’ risks being downgraded from its current billing as a global sensation to just being for the die-hard Clarkson audience alone.

“Given Meghan and Harry's popularity in the U.S., this stands to dent the Amazon bank balance in terms of viewers turning off, and they can't risk this whilst the share price is so low. This is very much one to watch!”

Clarkson definitely, as the saying goes, stepped in it. He knew better as he began to type the vivid, repulsive imagery that was perceived and experienced as violence and hatred of women.

With a clearer head, Clarkson may have been able to see the dangers ahead and chose not to throw caution to the wind with his words, communicate something egregious and shocking, hurt people, offend many others and put his reputation, career and personal well-being smack dab in front of harm’s way.

Maybe a trustworthy communication advisor would be a wise addition to his inner circle to protect him from conveying words that are as offensive to others and dangerous to himself and his business relationships.