A sorry tale

For editors, apologies don't come easy. The Mirror's grovelling to Steve Bing is a prime example of a less-than-gracious climbdown, says Paul Vallely

It was not quite the most grovelling apology in newspaper history. The prize for that is held still by The Mail on Sunday, which, four years ago, gave over its front page to a retraction of its splash the previous week that had alleged that the American actress Brooke Shields was being held by French police on suspicion of possessing drugs. Even so, the Daily Mirror's act of contrition last week to Steve Bing, the heir to a £275m property fortune, broke new ground.

It was not that it was more thorough than the offering by The Mail on Sunday. As a comprehensive renunciation, that would be hard to cap: "There was," its admission of guilt began, "no airport swoop; Miss Shields was not stopped at the airport; was not searched; was not quizzed; did not have any drugs or other illegal substances in her possession; has not and does not use drugs, and there were never any grounds even to suspect that she had done so." So utterly wrong in every detail was the story that its editor, Jonathan Holborow, also apologised personally to the actress all over page 3.

It was not in sheer abjectness that the Daily Mirror last week competed. True, it had a front-page strap that read: "A humble and sincere apology to Mr Steve Bing, philanthropist and humanitarian: page 9." And inside was a full-page grovel that made no reference to Bing's split with the actress Liz Hurley after the news broke that she was to have his child. Instead, it said: "Our readers should know that Mr Bing is not the ignominious character that he has been depicted by some in the media. He is a philanthropist and humanitarian who has dedicated himself to helping causes impacting on children and their families."

The trouble with tabloids is that they are unable to leave much to the subtlety of their readers' imagination. Instead of restricting himself to an extravagant presentation of the hagiographic apology – printed word for word as Bing's Californian lawyers had penned it – the Mirror editor, Piers Morgan, printed opposite it a full-page piece with the headline: "Why the Americans can't understand irony or sarcasm." And in case anyone had missed the satirical undertow to all this, Morgan then went on BBC Radio 4's World At One to say that the apology was the "most extraordinary we have ever published... in every sense, not least if you have a developed sense of humour". But Morgan must now be wondering if he has miscalculated; Bing's lawyers are considering further action.

Newspaper editors do not like to apologise. The public humiliation sometimes seems even worse than the prospect of paying out huge libel damages. Sometimes, of course, they are forced to do both. The Mail on Sunday paid Brooke Shields around £500,000. Piers Morgan had hoped his tongue-in-cheek apology would save him from the $40m punitive damages Bing had claimed in a US court. But sometimes, public opinion rather than libel lawyers is what forces an apology, as when The Sun said "Sorry Sophie" to Prince Edward's bride when, on the eve of their wedding, it printed an 11-year-old photo of her topless.

Apologies can be amusing. Some deliberately so, as with The Sun's "W. Ankers, An Apology: Mrs Jean Ankers has asked us to point out that "only a pervert" would find her husband's name the Worst Name in The World as our headline stated."

Others appeal through schadenfreude. Take The Guardian's: "We owe an apology to readers, particularly Jewish readers, offended by the careless construction of a caption... [referring to] the Kristallnacht 'celebrations'. A more inappropriate word would be hard to find." Or the day that The Times was forced to admit that Didier Baptiste, the ace French under-21 international that it had reported that Liverpool were trying to sign, was actually a fictional character in Sky TV's football drama Dream Team.

And then there are just those that are mistakes shot through with comic potential. "We should have said 'Whistler's Mother', and not 'Hitler's Mother'." "Our photograph of the Marquess was, inadvertently, that of an IRA bomber." "The punk star of the Christmas panto was not, in fact, the Prime Minister's wife but a Cherie Blair lookalike."

Real howlers are revealed by two indicators. First, watch for the word "unreservedly", as in "Sir Alan Sugar has asked us to say that he is not a friend of Piers Morgan. The Guardian accepts that and apologises unreservedly to Sir Alan..." The second is when the complainant is so sure of their ground that they can afford to divert damages to their favourite charity, as with the film stars Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson, who donated large amounts of cash from the Telegraph, Mirror and elsewhere to the Omagh bomb disaster fund after "utterly untrue" stories that they were divorcing.

Not that retractions always work for the victims. When Private Eye lost a libel case in 1989 for alleging that the wife of the Yorkshire Ripper, Sonia Sutcliffe, had sought to profit from her husband's notoriety by selling her story to a newspaper, the remark of its editor, Ian Hislop – "If that's justice, I'm a banana" – was widely and sympathetically quoted.

Part of the risk is that the public, however wrongly, assumes that whatever the apology says, there's no smoke without fire, which can strengthen the arm of the opponent. Private Eye's circulation received a huge boost from its feud with Sir James Goldsmith. When he sued it in 1976, it responded by portraying him as a sinister foreign megalomaniac, turning the affair into a PR success, setting up a "Goldenballs" fighting-fund to which tens of thousands of readers gave cash. The Eye continued to snipe at Goldsmith for the rest of his life.

But the other risk with seeking an apology is that, often, it just gives greater publicity to the original allegation. Or it can take time, as with Jeffery Archer, who won an apology and £500,000 from the Daily Star in 1987, only to be forced to repay it – plus interest and damages totalling £2.7m – years later once he had been convicted of perjury. The New Statesman is currently considering that precedent with regards to its past apology and damages to John Major for suggesting that he had had an affair. (It turned out that the magazine had only got the dates and the woman wrong.)

Of course, if you are crafty you pick your apology battleground carefully. Elton John issued a writ over The Sun's "Elton in vice boys scandal" story, based on the fictitious confessions of a rent boy. But what put the final nail in The Sun's coffin was a second made-up story that Elton had ordered a horrific operation be performed in order to silence his sleep-disturbing guard dogs. He cleaned up with the biggest front-page apology – and reputedly the largest out- of-court libel settlement ever – £1m.

When it comes to apologies, you have to watch out, as the proverb puts it, for the dog that doesn't bark.