Golriz Ghahraman can’t seriously complain about media coverage of her shoplifting.
And yet she has.
On Wednesday when she appeared in the Auckland District Court to plead guilty to four counts of shoplifting, her lawyer complained to the judge about media coverage. She blamed “aggressive media reports” for leadingto threats. She then said “there are mental health issues at stake”. She wanted the judge to prevent media filming the court appearance. The judge declined the application.
While her lawyer tried inside court to frustrate the media’s ability to cover the case, a bloke with a torch outside court tried to do the same.
He walked alongside Ghahraman to the court building shining his flashlight into media cameras. Beyonce has a man who does this too.
Ghahraman’s man wasn’t very successful. Despite his torch, there are lots of photos of Ghahraman walking into court. He probably didn’t realise he needed a stronger torch and maybe one for every camera there. And also, maybe he didn’t realise the trick works best in the dark and this was in daylight.
But it made a point nonetheless. Ghahraman had a celebrity minder. Ghahraman is a celebrity.
Golriz Ghahraman outside the Auckland District Court. Photo / Dean Purcell
Some politicians have profiles high enough for them to qualify as celebrities, and Ghahraman is one of them.
She was featured in the Guardian in 2017 when the National Archives documented her Twitter feed as a testimony of the 2017 election. She starred in a TVNZ documentary series about her illness. The media wrote reviews of her autobiography.
Then there was just the regular coverage of her political work. And there was a lot of that.
But you can’t turn that kind of media interest off. If they cover the good stuff, they will want to cover the bad stuff.
This is not to say Ghahraman doesn’t deserve sympathy. She does. There but for the grace of God go any of us complex and imperfect humans.
And negative media coverage like she is being forced to endure is very, very hard to bear.
It will undoubtedly be harming her mental health. But that is true for every single person who appears in court and has media report on their case.
It doesn’t matter if they are a shoplifter from Grey Lynn or a murderer in Timaru. No one wants others to know what they’ve done. Every one of them will suffer mental health harm from media coverage.
There is also no dispute that the media interest in Ghahraman is far more intense than in your average shoplifter from Grey Lynn because few of them will be the lead story on the TV news, the radio bulletins and both major newspapers.
But that is what it means to be a celebrity. A celebrity is just a regular musician or athlete or public figure who gets more media attention than the rest of them, whether good or bad.
The media helped her rise in her political career. Now they’re documenting the sad end of it. And that interest can’t be turned on and off on demand.
Ghahraman is a daughter and a friend and many other things to people who care about her. For her and them this must be very hard. I hope they can shield her from the worst of the media attention.
But they can’t stop it. She did the crime and media reports of it are, unfortunately, one of the tougher consequences of what she did.
