Paul Thomas: Sorry or not, there's no pleasing the media

How often do we hear it? "All you have to do is say sorry." Or: "I just want an apology."

Porn actress Joslyn James just wants an apology, although she'd like it delivered in person rather than over the phone, because "I didn't deserve this". By "this" she means the notoriety she has acquired since outing herself as one of Tiger Woods' mistresses.

A simple apology might work for the demure Ms James, but when you're dealing with the world's media "sorry" seems to be the most ineffectual word. Woods said it several dozen times but that wasn't nearly enough.

One of four columnists deployed by the New York Times called him disgusting and pathetic for making a public apology at all. Talk about lose-lose.

Some said it came too late, although you'd assume he wanted to be very sure all the bimbos had been flushed out before he took the first public step towards getting his life back on track. Others berated him for being unwilling to submit to interrogation.

As John Feinstein, author of A Good Walk Spoiled, the best-selling sports book ever, put it: "He is still above answering questions from those who are paid to represent a public that has helped make him a billionaire."

Actually, journalists aren't paid to represent the public at all; they're paid to fill newspapers and air time, to generate a commercial product.

Secondly, Woods is a billionaire because he's the greatest golfer who ever lived. To the extent that the public has contributed to his fortune, it was largely by changing channels to watch him play thereby making him appealing to sponsors. Woods has more than repaid the viewing audience through the quality and consistency of his golf.

One might also ask who in their right mind would choose to subject themselves to a no-holds-barred televised grilling about their illicit sex life. In the professional opinion of a body language expert commissioned by the Daily Telegraph, Woods showed he's very far from being in his right mind: "Genuinely petrified ... in a fragile, hunted state and would have been unable to answer any questions at all."

Many questioned his sincerity although few did so as haughtily as the Times' golf correspondent John Hopkins: "This was one of the greatest challenges that Woods has faced and he failed it. He failed to convince us of his sincerity because it all looked too contrived. Let him go away and prove he can do what he repeatedly said he wanted to do, and then we will judge him."

A dirty job, this business of sitting in judgment on those who have erred and strayed like lost sheep, but someone has to do it. Luckily for you, Mr and Mrs John Q. Public, there are people like Hopkins prepared to roll up their sleeves and do it for you.

Even so you may be wondering: who are these people who have, on your behalf, weighed Woods' apology and found it wanting?

How did they acquire the omniscience to know what's in a person's heart and the moral purity to be undeterred by the biblical injunction that he who is without sin should cast the first stone?

In my experience of journalism, which stretches back three decades, I haven't encountered a single person who announced themselves as a paragon of virtue. That's not to say journalists are ratbags, although the craft certainly has its share, it's to say they find it as hard to resist temptation as the rest of society.

The media coverage revealed more about the media than about Woods' current psychological whereabouts and the prospects for his marriage and career. It confirmed the media are addicted to criticism - if Woods had done everything they bagged him for not doing, he would have been bagged for not doing what he actually did.

As it was some commentators accused him of stage-management and in the next breath scorned the amateurish presentation.

It also demonstrated that the media revel in pronouncing judgment, which they do as capriciously as a Roman emperor giving the thumbs up or thumbs down at the Coliseum.

But given the maxim that today's front page is tomorrow's fish and chip paper, one might have expected some acknowledgment that this too shall pass and the cloud of disgrace enveloping Woods will eventually lift. After all, wasn't that Tony Veitch I heard on the radio analysing Tiger's apology?