Karl du Fresne: The striking outpouring of media empathy for Golriz Ghahraman

Rarely has the media’s all-pervasive pro-Left bias been demonstrated more emphatically than in the outpouring of empathy for Golriz Ghahraman.

In the past 24 hours, the tone of media commentary on the scandal surrounding the former Green MP has shifted with striking uniformity. The focus has conveniently been diverted from the wrongness of her actions – there’s barely a mention of that – to the supposedly cruel nature of a political culture that, we are told, placed her under acute stress.

Ghahraman says she cited her mental health problems not as an excuse but as an explanation. In fact she doesn’t need to use stress as an excuse, because her legion of media sympathisers have obligingly done it for her.

The Greens have copped flak for not front-footing the issue of Ghahraman’s shoplifting, but in reality the controversy has been something of a PR triumph, thanks to the media’s eagerness to justify her conduct. Who needs spin doctors when the commentators are already on board?

The excuse-makers, apologists and hand-wringers are out in force. Ghahraman’s conduct has been explained as the almost inevitable consequence of an oppressive, racist system that’s dominated by white males and seeks to destroy capable but vulnerable women.

For an example, check out Madeleine Chapman’s column at The Spinoff, headlined The dramatic exodus of brown women from Parliament is no surprise. The implication is that Kiri Allan and Elizabeth Kerekere were victims of the same syndrome, although the article makes no attempt to substantiate that claim.

I’ll wager, though, that if an opinion poll were taken today, it would find that women are just as offended as men by Ghahraman’s behaviour and by the media’s eagerness to absolve her of blame. Certainly she won’t get much sympathy from a struggling working mother on the minimum wage who wonders how she’s going to pay the supermarket bill but never thinks of resorting to dishonesty.

For what it’s worth, my own inclination, initially at least, was to feel some sympathy for Ghahraman. That feeling has now almost completely evaporated. I’ve concluded she doesn’t need my sympathy when she has virtually the entire media in her corner.

You have to look very hard in the welter of comment to find any mention of the irony that a woman whose parliamentary salary puts her in the top 1 per cent of income earners resorted to theft. And not theft of everyday essentials, but of high-end fashion items marketed to the elite. It all looks decidedly at odds with the political creed of an MP who has positioned herself as a champion of the poor.

It didn’t help that when the scandal broke, Ghahraman was on holiday overseas; exactly where, we haven’t been told. What has emerged is a picture of privilege and entitlement that sits very awkwardly with Green Party ideology.

Nowhere in all the commentary have I seen reference to the fact that countless thousands of New Zealanders deal with mental stress without feeling tempted to steal. As David Farrar put it, “Trying to excuse what happened as being due to stress from the job is insulting to all the people who are also very stressed but don’t shoplift”.

Nowhere is there any mention that shoplifting is a massive drain on the economy. Research in 2017 put the cost at $1.2 billion a year, and you can bet it’s a lot higher now.

Nowhere does any commentator consider the danger that if Ghahraman is allowed to use mental health as an excuse for theft, anyone else feeling under stress will now consider themselves entitled to steal.

Having a bad morning? Go and pinch something. If a high-profile politician can use stress as an excuse, then so can you.

Karl du Fresne, a freelance journalist, is the former editor of The Dominion newspaper. He blogs at karldufresne.blogspot.co.nz. - where this article was sourced.