If you are a celebrity, then paparazzi will surely become your unwanted companions. These are freelance journalists who earn on the sale of pictures of stars of the screen, politics, sports and other areas of life, whose heroes cause keen interest in the public.
Forgotten Ethics
The meaning of the word “paparazzi” is invariably colored by negative semantics, since the method used by tireless photographers is tactless and immoral. They can sit in an “ambush” for hours to capture the juicy details of a famous person’s personal life with a photo lens. Of course, such pictures are taken without the knowledge and consent of the characters themselves.
Origin of the word
Where did this word come from, the very sound of which hints at the meaning of the profession? In 1960, the famous Italian film director Federico Fellini created a film called "Sweet Life", one of the heroes of which was the ubiquitous correspondent photographer named Paparazzo. The director supplied this character with all the features that a sneaky and annoying journalist, hunting for a sensation, has. This word has a phonetic resemblance to the Sicilian name for mosquito. According to Fellini, the paparazzo (in the plural - paparazzi) is a bit of a bothersome buzzing insect that swiftly flies, hangs over you, and then stings. The master even painted a paparazzi, whose appearance resembles an unpleasantly curved figure, from which it blows with unprincipledness and impudence.
The Fellini film made the name of the photographer Paparazzo a household name. The word took on a plural form and became a symbol of a journalist chasing "fried" facts and ambiguous episodes. For the first time in this sense, the American magazine Time used the lexeme, and the term instantly spread through the pages of other printed publications.
Newspapers and magazines appeared that staked on paparazzi materials. These were publications focused on scandalous stories from the life of stars. After some time, a similar kind of television show joined them.
What is the difference between a journalist and a paparazzi
Often a paparazzi photo lens is likened to a barrel of a gun, from which sensationally greedy photographers “shoot” celebrities, exposing or compromising them, thereby distorting their lives. The difference between the journalist and the paparazzi is so great that these words are in no way synonymous. The first conducts an honest, objective investigation so that truth and law triumph. He has nothing to do with the creature that “stuck” to the camera’s eye and hid in the bushes in order to capture the details of the intimate life of a famous person that were not intended for the public, and then to break a solid jackpot on it.
But what about the law?
On the one hand, the law protects the human right to privacy, and on the other, there is freedom of the press. Many paparazzi commit violations in order to get what they want, they can impersonate other people, cheat, infiltrate private territory, forge documents and appearance. Their main arguments are that public people themselves make the choice in favor of having their whole life in sight, which is, after all, a way of making money and a condition of popularity. In their opinion, the relationship between the stars of show business and the paparazzi is a mutual unspoken agreement that they feed each other.
Indeed, celebrities would not be so if their faces and details of private life did not flash in the press, but they also have the right to inviolability, like all other people.
Who is to blame for the existence of paparazzi?
Demand creates supply. As long as there are people who are leafing through the yellow press with interest, there will also be correspondents who politely throw up the “strawberry”. Very few disgustedly reject a newspaper in which either the sensational photo of a star after an unsuccessful plastic surgery or the ambiguous shot of love joys of a respected person flashes. Most of us will be interested in and will begin to consider photographs that are unsightly from an ethical point of view. People are curious. And who are paparazzi in this case, if not traders in demand goods?