by Jaimee Rose - Jun. 12, 2011 05:15 AM
The Arizona Republic
Staff seeking to appease public, deter paparazzi
P.K. Weis of SouthwestPhotoBank.comToday, the public gets its first look at Rep. Gabrielle Giffords since she was shot through the head Jan. 8 at a constituent event near Tucson.
Today, the public gets its first look at Rep. Gabrielle Giffords since she was shot through the head Jan. 8 at a constituent event near Tucson.
Her staff provided two photographs to The Arizona Republic and also planned to share the images with the Arizona Daily Star and on Giffords' Facebook page. According to her staff, the decision to share them was made by Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, who hope the photos will help Giffords avoid the glare of camera lenses when she begins outpatient therapy later this month.
The goal was to satisfy "public curiosity about her appearance," said C.J. Karamargin, Giffords' communications director. "We want to avoid a paparazzi situation."
The photographs were taken on May 17 in the hours before Giffords' cranioplasty surgery by P.K. Weis of SouthwestPhotoBank.com, who photographed Giffords in the garden of the Houston rehab hospital where she is recovering. Weis, the former photo editor of the Tucson Citizen, is also Giffords' friend and said the photos were not altered.
The images depict Giffords alone and with her mother, Gloria Giffords. Her face shows almost no visible vestige of the bullet, which pierced her forehead, traveled through the left side of her brain, and exited her head. Her left eye appears slightly smaller than her right eye, likely because a piece of Giffords' skull was still missing when this photo was taken, her staff explained. The cranioplasty has since repaired her skull. In the photo, her brown hair has grown since it was shaved by Tucson doctors, and it covers surgical scars on her scalp. There is a scar at her throat left by a tracheotomy. Around her neck, she wears her husband's wedding ring on a chain.
"It is remarkable to think that this is a woman who was shot at point blank range in the head less than six months ago," said Karamargin. "We all came to the same conclusion: 'Wow, Gabby looks great.' "
In the five months since the shooting, Giffords has been shielded from view while undergoing intensive speech and physical therapy. Meanwhile, the public wondered about her progress and the news media asked her staff for definitive answers. The lingering, large question is whether Giffords will be able and wanting to return to her work as a third-term congresswoman, and when, but her doctors say that question is unanswerable, for now. Brain-injury patients require 12-14 months of recovery, doctors say, before informed prognoses can be considered about their future quality of life.
In the meantime, her staff is tasked with protecting her political future and the public trust. Giffords is an elected official, but while she recovers, how much does the public deserve to know?
Beyond medical assessments, not much, political analysts and professors say.
"I don't think (her family and staff) are obliged to tell (the public) the details of her condition," said Richard Parker, senior fellow and lecturer at the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University and a co-founder of Mother Jones magazine. "But I think they're obliged - at some point - to be completely honest, via the press, when it is likely or plausible when she can return to doing her job."
For now, Parker says, "they're within their rights to say, 'This is a delicate period, and we will not know until Christmas, from her doctors. But we would ask the public to bear with (her).' "
Media outlets and private citizens have criticized the amount and the clarity of the information shared, and the lack of access to Giffords, 41, who has not spoken to the news media or been observed by the media since the shooting that killed 6 and wounded 13. The suspect in the shooting is being held in a federal psychiatric facility until he is determined mentally competent to stand trial.
The public and the media could use some patience, said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. The question of whether she can serve "is not even fair to bring to the public right now," he said. "She's not expected to serve . . . until she recovers. If she can't recover, then you have a new reality, but we're not there yet."
However, "at a certain point - and we're probably approaching that point - her staff needs to give . . . people a full sense of what's happening" medically, Sabato said. "Because she is a U.S. representative, her constituents have a right to know what's going on to a certain degree. . . . I don't think it will generate anything but sympathy," Sabato said. "People want her to do well."
Giffords "knows she's not ready" to speak publicly or to the media, her chief of staff, Pia Carusone, has said in recent interviews with The Republic. "She does not want to do that right now."
Giffords communicates most often in one- and two-word sentences and struggles to find the words she wants to say, Carusone said this week. She uses gestures and facial expressions to get her points across, and her staff and family sometimes "infer" what Giffords means, Carusone said.
Her family and staff have protected her privacy amid rumors that TMZ was offering a $250,000 bounty for a current photo, Carusone said. TMZ reps did not return messages seeking comment.
Nurses have turned in cellphones before their hospital shifts at TIRR Memorial Hermann, where Giffords will continue as an outpatient. Black tarps kept her from cameras at NASA in Florida while she watched as her husband, a space-shuttle commander, launched Endeavour on its final mission in May. When Giffords left the hospital for a recent dinner out in Houston with her husband and some friends, reporters got tipped afterward and the event made headlines.
The only glimpse of Giffords was blurred: A TV camera filmed her from a distance in Houston while she boarded a plane bound for Florida, on her way to the shuttle launch. Her back was to the lens while she climbed stairs to the plane.
Political analysts say a photo or an interview that depicted Giffords in a weakened or compromised state could have damaged her political future in this image-obsessed age. Think 24-hour cable news networks, endless smartphone updates and citizen cellphone videos that turn into YouTube sensations.
"People are used to seeing her look a certain way," said Jennifer Duffy, a political analyst and senior editor at Cook Political Report in Washington, D.C., who had not seen today's photos of Giffords when she was interviewed. "And I think when people see such a change, no matter what it is, you know, they sort of draw their own conclusions, and create their own perceptions, and I . . . think the staff and the family want her to be seen in the best light, when she's not wearing a protective helmet and maybe her hair has grown back enough so they can make it all one length."
If her staff released a photo themselves, analyst Duffy said, "They decide the setting, they decide what she's wearing, whether she's wearing makeup, and they control the image . . . The media will think it's a bad thing, regular people won't care, and team Giffords will think it's a brilliant thing.
"The media has been so frustrated by having to take the staff view and family view of (Giffords') progress," Duffy said. "They want to see it for themselves, and the picture's the same way."
But Giffords' staff has had "an awful lot on their plates," Duffy said, and they're mourning the loss of their colleague, Gabe Zimmerman, killed in the shooting. But "this time, the politics and the personal cross . . . and the staff has worked pretty hard at making sure that when Giffords is ready to think about (future elections) or discuss them, all her options are open to her."
In the case of the photos released Sunday, Giffords' family and staff offered pictures taken immediately prior to her May cranioplasty, before surgeons shaved her head and replaced a missing piece of her skull.
Image control is not the reason more recent photographs weren't released instead, her staff said. They were working with the photographer's busy schedule, communications director Karamargin said, and wanted to use Weis in particular because of his history as a journalist and as Giffords' friend.
Maintaining political strength wasn't discussed by Giffords' staff in regard to these photos either, said Rodd McLeod, Giffords' interim district office coordinator.
"That's not really what we've been talking about," McLeod said. "Our primary concern is - I love Gabby. If she's going to be driven back and forth to the hospital and home, I don't want her to be chased around."
The staff hopes to sidestep intense media attention, he said.
"We're trying to give (Giffords' doctors) the space to do their work so Gabby can get better."
Though a trip to Tucson is in Giffords' near future, her staff says, that visit won't include a speech or media interviews.
"There's no timetable for anything like that," Karamargin said. They want Giffords to open that discussion.
"She'll have to say, 'I have something to say.' We're not pushing her into anything. . . . We understand it's frustrating. It's frustrating for us, for everyone, that there is no way to predict the course that this is going to take, but the one thing that we've learned throughout this entire process is the importance of being patient.
"When you consider that the congresswoman was injured while performing her job," Karamargin said, "We know - and we believe the public knows - that she deserved the time necessary to recover."
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