Some things you would just think are common sense, but with the ever increasing numbers of people flocking to strike it rich as celebrity photographers with the advent of ever more cost effective digital equipment and the tabloid media's insatiable appetite for gossip, it is a wild fire that is beginning to run out of control.
We saw the effects of this with the death of Princess Diana in 1997. Everyone from Government Heads to Local Celebrity, people can't get enough of catching these people in their private, and often very gauche moments. It's as if these media outlets have a motto of "A star is money. A falling star is a fortune."
It is exactly that kind of attitude among photographers that I find to be one of the most disgusting. There are two types of photographers out there that really give the profession a bad name, one of them is associated with the modeling industry, and the other is the unscrupulous Paparazzi.
Right now there is a big "so-called" crackdown in L.A. even though the police aren't calling it such. As CBS news reports:
It sometimes looks like the Wild West on the streets of Los Angeles, with hordes of paparazzi chasing down celebrities and creating pandemonium and, frequently, danger. --cbsnews.com View Story Here
So I felt it appropriate to discuss this topic
I will concede two things here:
- It's possible that not all Paparazzi are the type that I talk about here
- If the public didn't want it, there wouldn't be a market for it
To point one - it's those paparazzi you never hear about. It's those guys that understand the unwritten rules of respect and privacy. But more on that in a moment.
To point two - while it may be true, and is often argued about a lot of things, if there wasn't a product, there wouldn't be a market either. People don't need to see photos of Brittany Spears being rushed to and from the hospital. The mere act of all the attention that this poor girl is getting only exacerbates her situation. It throws fuel on the fire and makes her recovery all the more difficult. Not to mention the hopes and dreams that are crushed with the failing of a person that so many may idolize.
And it's not just with pop stars like Brittany Spears, or Lindsay Lohan. What about the sports figures? What of political leaders? Their private lives are not a matter of public concern. When did we decide we needed to make it our business?
Sure, parents and other "activists" might claim that we need to know about these people and their personal lives so we can protect our children and their idols. That way our children aren't exposed to idols who could otherwise corrupt them and teach them bad traits through association. But consider this argument - if the person in question's personal life was kept quiet and any legal dealings against them kept obscured from the public eye, then that person's public reputation would remain untarnished, and thus protecting our children from learning of such traits.
Celebrity status doesn't revoke your rights as a person, in fact, it should make them even more protected as a public face your privacy is going to be a bigger deal. These people are human, just as you and I, and they are prone to make the same mistakes that we do. If we do not make it our business to plaster their personal business across the globe, then their privacy would remain in tact, and those who idolize them wouldn't suffer their fall from grace. Perhaps they might wonder "what ever happened to such and such?" years later and look them up through whatever resources to learn that after a bout with a drug problem they destroyed their career and fell from the spotlight, but by that time they would be mature adults capable of seeing the consequences.
This would give our children a piece of their childhood back, protect a person's right to privacy, and continue to encourage good things to come.
What I find more disgusting than most of the deeds that these celebrities have done is the lengths to which these paparazzi and some journalists go through to get their photos and/or story. Paying off body guards or other personnel to steal private home videos (usually sex tapes like with Brett Michaels & Pam Anderson, as well as the more well known Tommy Lee & Pam Anderson), hiding places with incredibly powerful lenses to capture them walking around their house or hotel most unexpectedly, rummaging through garbage, and planting hidden cameras/microphones in a number of various ways.
Some of the acts these people go through are just immoral and unethical, but others are down right illegal. They only get away with it because a publication does not have to identify it's source for material, which I do believe in, but a corrupt publication doesn't care about ethical or clean publications, they care about money, and much like a car wreck on the highway, everyone has to slow down and look.
I firmly believe in freedom of press and in the ability for the press to have confidential sources to encourage legitimate reporting. But I believe a person's right to privacy supercedes the freedom of the press in the case of a pop star's incarceration, an actor's admittance into rehab, or a presidents weekend fling with an intern. Does their action today take away from their achievements yesterday? No. You can acknowledge someone's achievement without worshiping them, and if you weren't spoon-fed the gossip, it wouldn't matter.
As far as athletes and steroids and other such things are concerned, yes, those things can influence their achievements and should be dealt with accordingly, but that doesn't necessarily mean publicly. Why destroy someone when they are innocent until proven guilty? Why provide the possibility of glamorizing their offenses by making it a public ordeal? Let the systems that are in place settle the score, decide the outcome, and then report it.
Photographers, as well as journalists and artists alike, need to respect the individual that becomes their subject, whether they like them or hate them. There needs to be a level of respect to be maintained in order to keep an ethical and just system in place that does not contaminate the public perception. There needs to be a balance between the lynch mob and idol worship.
For more information regarding paparazzi, see USA Today's article: Laws do little to block paparazzi.
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