Monday, September 15, 1997

Paparazzi:

Not real photojournalists

By LARRY NIGHSWANDER

For Scripps Howard News Service

Everyone worries about the day some distant relative no one in the family talks about ends up on the front page of the newspaper, and itís never for winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

For photojournalists around the world, that day arrived with the tragic accident that claimed the life of Princess Diana. When the news of the accident arrived, the implication that photographers of any type were even remotely involved in the accident made the skin crawl on the professional journalists who use cameras to tell their stories.

Let me state up front that paparazzi are not photojournalists.

I risk the wrath of many of my colleagues by the mere gall of using the two terms in the same sentence. Calling a photojournalist a paparazzi is equivalent to assigning someone the most derogatory label possible.

The majority of professional photojournalists are highly educated, not only in the use of a camera, but also in journalism skills. Their training includes classes on communication, law and, most importantly, ethics.

These individuals are the people who bring you the joys and sorrows that make up daily life. They are the people who sometimes put themselves at risk to let us know what is happening in our neighborhood and around the world.

They show us the little moments in peopleís lives that make us smile and they sometimes force us to remember manís inhumanity to man. For this we need to be grateful.

To lump these dedicated individuals together with paparazzi is hurtful and unfair.

That publishers are willing to invest sometimes huge amounts of money for photographs that purport to show us the intimate private lives of famous people has spawned this loutish bunch of individuals we call paparazzi.

Greed has pushed civility out the window as paparazzi do anything to get the pictures that will seed their bank accounts. Some people call the relationship symbiotic, but so is the relationship between a blood sucking leach and its host.

Whether the paparazzi were breaking the law at the time of the accident is a moot point. What is offensive to photojournalists is their lack of moral responsibility, manners and sensitivity. They make a career out of pushing their way into peoples lives in a way that makes them repugnant.

It is sad that it took the death of a beloved figure to finally make us stop and think about our levels of acceptable behavior. Who is to blame for such a disgusting development?

Are the paparazzi solely to blame? Is it the publications that pay large amounts of money for these photographs that border on invasion of privacy? Is it the millions of ordinary newspaper and magazine readers who plunk down their money to get a quick peek into the lives of celebrities no matter what the cost to the individual lives of the subjects?

Most people agree that if no one bought the drugs on the street corner the pushers would eventually disappear. If we have indeed reached the point where we are so angry that we will no longer accept the appalling actions of that band of marauding celebrity bounty hunters we call paparazzi, it rests with each of us to take the first step to solving the problem.

Please donít throw out the dishes with the wash water.

Larry Nighswander is director of the School of Visual Communication at Ohio University and a former newspaper photographer and picture editor for National Geographic Magazine.