Paparazzi to go.

• Author: Saltzman, Joe
• Position: WORDS & IMAGES

MENTION THE WORD "paparazzi" and no one, even seasoned journalists, leaps to their defense. They have been described by celebrities and the news media as scum-of-the-Earth--mean, intrusive scavengers who feast upon other people's misery. They are viewed as the lowest form of life on the planet.

In his 1960 film "La Dolce Vita," director Federico Fellini named the news photographer in the film "Paparazzo," a word he defined loosely as "buzzing mosquito." Since then, photographers chasing after anyone, usually celebrities, have been called paparazzi and no one is quite sure what to do with them.

Most journalists would agree with Paul Greenberg, a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial page editor of the Little Rock Democrat-Gazette, who sees it quite simply as an economic issue: "There's really a very simple way to curb the excesses of paparazzi journalism." The solution, he writes, is for the public to "quit buying the publications that pay keyhole-peeping photographers for sleazy pictures." That opinion is shared by tabloid magazines and newspapers who buy the images. They shrug their collective shoulders, saying no one is forcing anyone to buy their publications. If no one bought them, the market for paparazzi journalism would dry up.

The truth is that the people who vehemently condemn paparazzi cannot wait to pick up mainstream magazines such as People and Us to see what their favorite celebrity looks like away from the fights and cameras. They may tell surveys and the news media that they hate celebrity-chasing goons, but their actions indicate otherwise. In fact, the Internet boasts that noncelebrities can hire a gang of real paparazzi to follow them around and capture intimate moments of their file. All it costs is $1500 a day, and the paparazzi-for-hire will hound "customers" as they go about their business in Los Angeles.

Talk to the paparazzi, and they will tell you they are only trying to make a living in an increasingly tough market. Everyone now has a cell phone with a camera and these amateur shutterbugs are eager to capture a picture of a celebrity and sell it to the highest bidder or put it on the world wide web for nothing more than the satisfaction of having done it. These amateurs often are even more brazen than the professionals in trying to get a shot of Jennifer Aniston in a public toilet or dripping mayo while eating a sandwich.

Celebrities constantly complain about paparazzi and now amateur photographers who invade their...