Justin Bieber has issued yet another apology after a second video emerged reportedly showing the singer using the N-word and making racist jokes. "I need to step up and own what I did," Bieber said. "I am sorry for all those I have let down and offended."
Unlike Bieber's previous apology, which he posted to his Twitter account, this one was apparently issued exclusively to the Sun. "Facing my mistakes from years ago has been one of the hardest things I've ever dealt with," he said, expressing hope that "the next 14-year-old kid who doesn't understand the power of these words ... not make the same mistakes I made". On Wednesday, Bieber used Instagram to share a different kind of penitence: he posted a page from Jesus Calling, the 2004 book by Presbyterian missionary Sarah Young. "Man's tendency is to hide from his sin," she writes, "But 'I am the Light of the world,' and My illumination decimates the darkness." The passage ends with two Bible excerpts.
Both of Bieber's videos - the first published on Monday, the second on Wednesday - appear to date from about five years ago, during the shooting of his documentary Never Say Never. The latest clip shows the singer on what looks like a film set, reportedly singing a slur-laden parody of his song One Less Lonely Girl. It allegedly includes a joke about joining the Ku Klux Klan.
Bieber's manager, Scooter Braun, responded with an Instagram photo of his own - a carefully composed inspirational quote. "Some mistakes have no excuses," it reads. "They are just wrong. But how a man reacts to those mistakes... How he owns it and learns from it... That defines him more than the mistake itself. - Scooter."
This follows on another recent controversy, from Bieber's spring visit to Japan. While there, the 20-year-old posed for photographs at Tokyo's Yasukuni war shrine - one of the most controversial sites in all of Asia. Bieber claimed he had only stopped at the shrine because it was "beautiful". "To anyone I have offended I am extremely sorry," he wrote later. "I love you China and I love you Japan." This caused a separate outcry from South Koreans many of whom believed that they too were owed an apology.
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