224: Analyzing the Apology Statement: the Andrew Callaghan example

First, the allegation. The platform TikTok.

I never in a million years thought that I would be making this video and I'm shaking because I've tried a couple different times and haven't been able to get my point across. But I don't like seeing abusers get platforms. And my abuser, Andrew Callahan, also known as All Gas, no breaks, Channel 5 and whatever his new HBO show is called, I forget, has been plastered all over my newsfeed and I've tried to come to him person to person and try to get him to take accountability for what he did, but his verse version of what happened the night that he assaulted me is so skewed.

Let's hear Callahan's version and then we'll talk about it. Welcome to the Indestructible PR Podcast where we use current events and tested media and PR strategies to help you prevent or manage a crisis and build an indestructible reputation. In this episode there are two women who have accused Andrew Callahan, an independent journalist known for his YouTube shows, of sexual misconduct. The problem? Public shaming all over TikTok. What Andrew Callahan now needs to do is recover his reputation. But will a public figure be able to overcome this misconduct like sexual assault and continue in his role as a journalist? Let's listen to the apology and then you can decide. Andrew Callahan, the creator and star of the popular YouTube series All Gas, no Breaks and Channel 5, as well as the new HBO mockumentary this Place Rules, has recently addressed allegations of sexual misconduct. The 25 year old YouTuber is known for his unique style of journalism and has gained a large following since his debut in 2014. Why this episode on TikTok? I get requests all the time to cover apologies and I recently posted a TikTok about Gwen Stefani claiming that she was, you know, oh God, I'm Japanese. And in that video response I noticed a lot of commenters asking about Andrew Callahan. So what does hey, crisis communicator from my generation whose family name is Callahan, by the way. What do I do with this information? Because I don't know who this guy is, but enough people asked that I thought I need to dig into it. And as soon as I googled him I knew exactly who he was. So I kn, but I just did not connect the name because he has created. Callahan has kind of created this brand of this new journalism. I thought this is a good analysis because Callahan, you know, he has thousands of followers on YouTube, I think over 5,000 followers on YouTube, but he's very popular in that video realm. And he's going to deliver a video apology. So I wanted to look into that video apology. Now, these accusations made about him showed up on social media, TikTok. And when things go to TikTok, that is a platform that is particularly dangerous for accusations, because these accusations are being set to video. You know, back in the day, a lot of these accusations would come out on Twitter. So you had to, you know, you had to accuse someone in under 180 characters. I believe. I believe that's what it was before it was 280. But, you know, they're just words, right? But what TikTok does is it brings video. We see the person, we see the pain, we see exactly who they are. And when someone recounts a sexual assault or sexual misconduct, you are so drawn in. So it requires a very specific type of apology, a precision like apology. And Callahan delivered that. He released a statement, you know, essentially talking about, you know, the hurt that he may have caused, that he's devastated about these allegations. A number of his fans have come out to support him. They're citing their own experiences with him as evidence of his good character, though some have expressed their disappointment with the allegations. But this is really a story, or this is really analysis looking at what Kelahan said, how he said it, and why he said it. Because regardless of one's opinion on the matter, it's clear that these types of situations not only raise important questions about consent and accountability and how we as a public should hold people accountable, but also it's how people in the public position should handle these types of allegations when they come out. Because it's a reminder that no matter how successful or influential someone may be, on the one hand, yes, they're still human and they can make mistakes. But some mistakes are unforgivable, and some are. But we need to decide which one applies and where it falls. And the apology goes a long way in deciding that. Now, I do encourage you to listen to an accuser's account on TikTok. I have a link in the show notes, listen to her entire experience to really get a true sense of what's happening here. I didn't want to play all of it because there's just a lot of content between the apology and her particular TikTok. But I'm going to tell you, when I watched it, I was drawn in. You can't help but be drawn in to hear her explain exactly what happened to her and how she said no repeatedly to Callahan. But in a way, he almost coerced her groomed her into consent. So that, without a doubt, is a gray area. It's gray. But for me watching it, two things happened. One, I believed her. And the reason why I believed her is because in this video, I'm listening to her words and I'm seeing her and I'm hearing her explain what happened. And it is absolutely reasonable to think that something like that could happen. And the reason why I know it is because as I watch this video, I realized, oh, my God, that happened to me. I had a long suppressed memory of the same thing happening to me. The same thing. Now, in the end, she said that she consented because she felt that she was just eventually just beaten down. But, you know, just metaphorically, you know, by his persistence. That piece did not happen to me, but the setup of it was the same thing, and I completely forgot about it. And I say that as a way of. Why these types of crises, these PR crises, when is. Especially when it involves some form of misconduct where someone is victimized. Now, particularly if someone's sexually victimized, it does trigger something in a lot of people, especially for other victims who have memories at the surface, and victims like me who completely forgot about something that happened to me in my early 20s, and I brought it back. And so what happens in Callahan's apology, I can analyze it as a public relations professional and look at the words and determine if it works. But I'm also looking at it as a victim, someone who went through it. And I'll admit I brought bias into my analysis of his apology. So let's get into it, because I still want to analyze it critically from an independent point of view. Now, when anyone experiences a PR crisis, what it means to them is that their brand is at risk. Okay? And what is at risk is trust. You need to maintain and restore trust if it's lost. And that's usually what's happened in a PR crisis. So for Callahan, it's his viewers, advertisers, fans, collaborators, and even employees. So in this episode, let's talk about what to do when someone is faced with misconduct. So maybe you're someone who works for an entity that you have, someone who has committed some type of third rail form of misconduct. Maybe you know, someone who has a big brand, maybe their name is the brand, and they've been accused of something. How do you write an effective apology? Now, the first step is just simply determining, you know, what to do if you're faced with this type of misconduct. You know, what do you do? Okay, the question is, what do you do now or what should we do about it? So here's some questions to ask. Question number one. Is the person newsworthy enough to release a statement? Is there a stakeholder out there, a group, an audience out there that needs to hear from this person? Many times the answer is yes. But let's say this is in town, you know, and this is happening on a town Facebook page. That's a whole different scenario. We're looking at this. If it's someone who is the face of a business, face of a brand, someone that is newsworthy, like, will this be picked up someplace else? So then you need to determine. The answer is yes. You need to determine where you need to release that statement and when do you need to release that statement? And will the statement help you move past the PR crisis? Other considerations, what form does it take? Is it a written statement? Is it a written statement that's tweeted? Is it a video statement? Where does this video reside? Is it in Instagram stories and it goes away in 24 hours, or does it live? Does it leave a footprint? Is it there for good? Does it only live for 24 hours or two weeks and you take it down? Or will it always be there, always Gaining SEO, search engine optimization, in other words, is it googleable that someone will always find it? Now, trying to get past the PR crisis is important to think about what is lost. And again, it's that trust. So when I'm crafting a response for someone, I'm thinking in my head, what would a reasonable person expect a reasonable person to do or a responsible person to do facing this type of situation? I've said this before, don't write apologies to your critics. You're writing to the public here. Okay? And we want the reasonable public. What will they do? And when you write these types of statements for me and my clients, I use my indestructible PR response framework. It follows three things. You have to own it, you have to explain it, and then you have to promise it. All three of those, in that order, will create a statement that will help you navigate whatever situation it is. Now, the problem with creating these statements, they're easy, by the way. They're easy. Writing a statement is easy. What makes it difficult and what makes apologies hard is that shame and ego and pride, they get in the way. Also the legal considerations. So now let's go to Andrew Callahan. What did he do? He released an over four minute apology video on his YouTube page and he shared it to social media. I have the links in the show notes to the YouTube video and also to his Instagram account. So when we listen to this, I'm going to play clips from the apologies, you know, coming in over four minutes. I don't want to play the whole thing, but I have enough of the clips that you're definitely going to get a sense of his apology. So right off the bat and his apology, he tells us what kind of statement this is going to be. And you can tell just from the optics, he's sitting in what looks like a living room. Looks like an apartment or a townhome. Looks like a room that a 24 year old guy would live in. You know, you see, you know, the couch in the background, a blanket, you know, sitting on there. There's like a. Looks like a garage sale print, you know, on the wall. But also to note he's wearing a pit sweatshirt. So here's a PR tip for just save yourself the headache. Don't. If you're doing any video response, don't wear merch. Do not wear merch. Don't cause a headache for someone else. It reminded me last month there was, I tweeted this. There's a Massachusetts woman who was arrested for murder for allegedly poisoning her boyfriend with antifreeze. And when she was, when they took photos of her when she was arraigned, she was wearing a Boston College hoodie. And I tweeted it, as a Boston University alum and also a newly appointed adjunct professor, I tweeted something about it. I mean, murder serious, but anyone from BU who sees like a Boston College sweatshirt. So clear. So still we don't know if she's a graduate of the program. But at any rate, it's one of those PR mistakes that you want to avoid. Just don't wear anyone else's merch. But Andrew is just sitting there. He loves. Looks like a 25 year old. So someone probably told him, and we'll get into this in a bit. Just dress how you would normally dress. So he just threw on a hoodie. But it would just be a lot easier just to use one that doesn't have any branding on it. So the optics are good. We absolutely get the feeling that this is a guy sitting down looking in his computer to film this apology. It doesn't need to be highly produced like Will Smith. It needs to be just Andrew being Andrew in the place where he inhabits. All right, so now let's get into the clips. I'm going to play clips that are going to show the own it and the explain it. That's where I'm going to spend all the time because the promise, it is important because it gets you through the crisis. But these two are where the consequence lies. If you get it right, you can get through it. If you get it wrong, you're not. It's as simple as that. So let's start with the own it piece of it. This first clip is how we are starting off the apology. Take a listen.

I never thought I'd make a video like this, but I think there's an important conversation to be had and I just want to be fully accountable, honest and transparent with all of you guys. So I'd like to start by thanking every single person who's came out in the past week to speak about different ways in which my behavior has made them feel uncomfortable or pressured during a sexual situation. And to people who said that I've made unwanted advances and had a hard time with rejection. I'm sure this was not easy to do. It's never easy to speak out and it was hard for me to hear as well, because to be honest with you, up until this point, I didn't even really realize that I had this pattern.

In these first few words, we are looking for someone who is going to take ownership. But in this clip, there's a nuance to it. While he seems to be owning up to it, he's actually contextualizing it. Perhaps he misconstrued the allegations of sexual assaults. He got confused, maybe by mixed signals. He's setting a stage that tells us, did someone help him? Likely, because this is where precision comes into play. Even though he is saying it and reading it in a way that seems very top of mind. It's like an off the cuff response. And I have to be honest here, he does a very, very good job of not reading a statement, but speaking a statement. I was looking at his eyes, I was looking at his mannerisms. He had, in my opinion, talking points on his screen that he was not reading to. Now, the reason why I think he was successful in this, and I encourage you, if you care about this stuff, watch the video, is because he has a background in video. So that's why someone with this type of technical video acumen is going to do a better job in this type of an apology. It's going to come across as more authentic. Now, in this next clip, he's getting to the apology for something. So take a listen.

I'd also like to apologize for my silence. I think that when this stuff first came out, I was in a state of denial and shock. I was, you know, just riding the high for my movie that just came out. And then within 48 hours, I was denounced by my closest collaborators, and my name was printed in 40 different news outlets next to the words sexual misconduct. And I just kind of spiraled into a mental health crisis.

What we heard there was some framing. He mentioned a movie. We got to drop the movie. He's denouncing behavior, but we're getting the sense of a woe is me narrative. People, you know, worrying about his name being side by side, people other people accused of sexual assault. And this is where a lot of people go wrong in public apologies and public statements. They cannot help but get into the woe is me piece of the apology. Their ego will not allow them to fully disarm themselves. They have to share what happened to them. Happens all the time. I don't want to have a gender bias here, but anecdotally, when I analyze these types of apologies, males struggle with this more than females do. Females just roll over. I'm wrong. I did it. I'm sorry. Men struggle a little bit more. Almost always a man will get hung up in this area, and when he talks about sexual misconduct, he, you know, being the truth about sexual misconduct, what we're calling them are consequences. That's what they're called, consequence. That's what's happening to him. You did something wrong, and now there's a consequence for it. And he says he's okay now, but it's not about me. It's about the people he affected. Even though his words say, this isn't about me, it's about the people he affected with this. What he's saying is it's about me. It's also about me. He doesn't want anyone to forget that. All right, let's take a listen to the next clip.

This is about me. This is about the people that I've affected. So I just want to express my complete sympathy, respect, and support for anyone who I've done wrong by. And I really want to do better and be fully accountable for everything that I've done right.

It's not about him, but did you notice how he really isn't taking accountability for it? He's talking about sympathy and respect and support for anyone who I've done wrong. That is not an apology. That is not taking accountability. That's talking about taking accountability. It's like writing a script about someone. It's like he is a character in his own play or in his own movie. That's not an apology. It's Pretty damn close. It's pretty good. Whoever penned this did a good job, but technically, they didn't apologize. He wants you to think that he's taking full accountability because he wants to be fully accountable for everything he's done. Okay, now let's move on to the explain it portion of here. Let's listen to the context. So now, again, so own it means you're acknowledging, you're accepting, you're admitting all the A's atoning. Now, as we go into explain it, this is the piece, the rehabilitation piece. This is the restoration piece. This is where you can start to reclaim your trust, because you are explaining what happened. It gives you the opportunity. You've already ripped off the band aid. So now we're going to going to explain why it happened. This is where we speak to a very specific group. We are speaking to the core audience of reasonable people who can understand what's going on here. We're not talking to your super fans. They've already formed an opinion. We already know who his super fans are. They're young guys just like him telling him he didn't do anything wrong. And you're not necessarily speaking to the victim as well at this point, that person should have been spoken to in the first section in Own It. That's who you're talking to, and he missed it. So here, now you want to speak to reasonable people who can understand where you're coming from. So let's take a listen to him putting context to what happened.

So that being said, I want to make a few things clear. I've always taken no for an answer. As far as consent, I've never overstepped that line. But, you know, I think I want to have a more nuanced and important conversation about power dynamics, pressure, and coercion. Because, you know, like I said, I think for a long time, I was behaving in a way that I actually thought was normal.

You're going to hear so that being said. So that being said, that is Callahan's trigger phrase. That is his. You hear, I think, gosh, One of my first podcasts was about filler words and filler phrases. Whenever he has to navigate to a difficult sentence, when he makes that transition, he uses the filler phrase of so that being said. But anytime you hear so that being said, you know that we're headed into some explanation stage. So he wants to make things clear that he thought persistence was a form of flattery. Going home alone was like being a loser. He's speaking to what audience did you say 25 year old guys like bros, people like him, his fans, that's who he's talking to right there. He is trying to build that support of people who understand and believe him. He wants to speak to people who can reasonably understand that 25 year old guys can be sex pests, that they can make wrong decisions because you know what it's, you know, boys will be boys. So that's what he's writing to, that's what he's speaking to. Listen for the framing in this next clip. See if you can catch it.

Going home from the bar alone made you a loser. I thought that persistence was a form of flattery. And I thought that, you know, if at first somebody was reluctant, you know, they're playing hard to get, just try harder. And if you think someone's feeling you, you know, make a physical advance and see if they go with it. And I think that especially I realized when so many young people, especially young men, rush to defend me when this stuff first started coming out, that this type of sex pest behavior is normalized. And a lot of people think this stuff is normal when I don't think that it is. And I think that I want to be fully responsible for not having a fluid understanding of consent and what enthusiastic two way consent looks like.

Now you got it right. He named it. He named the group who he wrote the statement for. Young men who are already defending him. That's who he's talking to. Not the victims, not the victims, just fellow sex pests. That's who he's writing this for. So before he acknowledges he was wrong about his sexual conduct, he had to normalize it by adding other guys into it. So it's not just him. All guys behave this way, all of us do it and then he denounces it. It's normalized because this is what society allowed us to do. This is what women allowed us to do. But now I get it. This happened, so everything's changed. So now I can't do it anymore. So do you see what he did there? Or I should say, do you hear what he did there? Now that is the work of a fixer. There is no doubt in my mind that someone is handling this statement forum. It is precision, like in taking accountability but not taking accountability. It's just like that classic line in all the President's Men Said by Jason Robarbs playing Ben Bradley, the editor of the Washington Post during the Nixon years. It's a non denial denial. He's getting really close. He's getting really close. But he's not doing it. All right, and how do we know that a fixer is involved? Just take a listen.

That being said, a lot of the things that have been said online about me are not true. A lot of things are missing, really important contextual information that I think would change people's interpretation of a lot of these situations. But I'm not here to invalidate anybody's lived experience. If you feel pressured, you know, that's just what it is.

Now we're in the explanation part where things are not true, they're simply not true. He's not calling the accusers liars, but he's just commenting on other lived experiences. That is a colorful way of saying they're lying. Okay, they may think that. They may think that. That's their experience, but it's not my experience. It's not my experience. He's not saying that what she's saying is necessarily wrong. This is that form of gaslighting. When you hear it. It's when people try to convince you that you're crazy, that people try to convince you that you're wrong. You can see now if you were to listen to the victim's full TikTok where she talked about this grooming process, how he just broke her down to consent, this is how you do it. You convince the person that they're being approved. You convince the person that they're being uptight. It's this gaslighting that happens to so many victims, many of them women, many of them women who make decisions maybe when they're impaired and not even just like crazy intoxicated, maybe just buzzed, and their level of risk goes down and they make these decisions. It's so dangerous. Now, I could be wrong. I don't know. But can I tell you? That's what I hear. That is exactly what I hear in this statement. And when I mentioned in the beginning when I said I had a bias, this is where my bias comes in. I've lived gaslighting. I hear it. I can smell it a mile away. So that's what I think happened 100%. But this area also that we're entering is a legal gray area. This is where people are unwilling to admit to actions that could lead to charges and convictions. Apologizing is there to reduce legal liability. So you need to apologize enough that you get through the public shaming portion of it and you can resume your business, but that you don't get charged with anything. And this area is a contentious area for communicators and lawyers. So, yes, the lawyers often went out because they're looking at the legal ramifications. Now there's a crisis expert who I follow, James Lukaszewski, and he is just a real kind of bare bones crisis expert. He has a book. I love how this guy looked at crisis communication because he looked at it in a very pragmatic, common sense way. So I absolutely follow his type of thinking around it. He said an apology may be the trigger to a settlement, but failure to apologize is always a trigger for litigation. So well said. And that's why these statements don't ring of authenticity so often. Because they're written. They're written. So there isn't a litigation. They're written for settlement. They're written enough. So a victim, here's what's said. They feel there's enough remorse there that in their mind that they can allow themselves to drop it and let it go for settlement. But it's written so they don't get charged. So do you see the nuance here? Because, yes, this is about reputation and public opinion, but reputation is a business asset. If you've lost it, you've lost your business. And that's what happened to Andrew Callahan. Now, the last stage of the indestructible PR framework is promise it. These are your plans in the future, like what you are doing to rectify the problem. What work are you going to do on yourself? I'm not going to use any clips because you could probably fill in the blanks for all of them. He is going to therapy. He admits that alcohol probably was a likely contributing factor. So he's going to join a 12 step program. He's going to join AA. He's going to take a step back from public life like he had the choice. And his hopes that his message is reaching people who have suffered the same as his victims. Playbook. Absolutely, playbook. Now do we take it all together? Will Callahan get through this? If I had to predict it based on this response, this was a good response. This was a response he paid for and he paid really good money to get it. There is a professional holding the pen or on the keyboard writing this response. I picture someone with a yellow legal pad and a pen, wink, wink, writing this form. But they did an excellent job. But as consumers, as you all are, you can listen for yourself and you can be the judge. Did this work for you? Now, as a PR professional, it did. Personally, it did not. I think Andrew Callahan is guilty of everything he did. And I think only a few people came out and said something, you know, that TikTok video. How many more TikTok videos could be out there from this guy or guys like him? Now? Will he come back and fully resume his career? Will it be at the same level? We don't know. But I think we are entering a Stage now in 2023 where people are given more of a pass if they go through the brutality of these public shaming moments where they have to apologize. If they go through that, they tend to get through it. They get through the crisis. So I think he will. I think this apology in air quotes did the job. But I'll admit, this guy, I followed his YouTube channel. I don't anymore. And when I see this guy, I'm going to have a triggered reaction when I see him, just like the woman at the beginning of this episode. So I've just explained that Andrew got through the apology to get into the specifics of why he is going to get through the apology. Now, did he say what he was apologizing for? No, he was too vague. Did he make it clear who he was apologizing to? No, he just apologized to women in general. He did not apologize really specifically to his victims. Did he express remorse? Yes, I think he did. Did he emphasize it with feelings? Yes, I think he did a good job with that. He was quick. There wasn't much of a delay there. He did give assurances that it won't happen again, I think. And will he rectify it? Yes. So he passed the bar. From a legal standpoint, I think he absolutely. Now, in every episode, I leave you with one indestructible PR tip. It's like an easy to remember takeaway to help you build an indestructible reputation. And here it is. At the root of all the PR crises, like this one with Andrew Callahan, is betrayal. When there is a person who has been betrayed, they want justice. And many times their justice is dismissed as being irrational, crazy even. But injustice needs a voice. They need to be heard. They need someone to fix it. And it's very difficult to go up against that. So you don't need to focus on writing the perfect statement to get away with your misconduct if you conduct yourself in a manner that does not create the PR crisis in the first place. That's all for this week on the podcast. Thanks for listening. Bye for now.