Hollywood's celebrities appeared on TV talk shows so often last week that you'd think it was Oscar time. They were of course saddened by the tragic death of Princess Diana. But they were also eager to complain about the paparazzi, whose aggressive tactics may have played a role in her death. Elizabeth Taylor called them murderers.
Tom Cruise has told how he and his wife Nicole Kidman were chased by photographers through the same Paris tunnel. Everyone from George Clooney to Whoopi Goldberg joined in; boycotts were enforced; proposed legislation. Some stars are said to even want to explore the private lives of tabloid editors to give them a taste of their own medicine.
Of course, all this had its self-serving side. Hollywood stars would like nothing better than to make the press obey, paving the way for non-stop coverage of their thriving careers, contented home lives, and undying interest in the spotted owl.
Still, in this case, Hollywood hit the public mood perfectly. The week of mourning that followed Diana's death also saw an outpouring of opposition to the paparazzi's tactics, prompting a new round of self-evaluation by publications that use their photos and at least tacitly condone their excess.
Paparazzi – the celebrity photographers who stalk stars and seek out shots of them in unguarded moments – has been around for decades, chasing the trail of the likes of Elizabeth Taylor and Jacqueline Onassis. But the game has gotten wilder in recent years as celebrity media has proliferated and new technologies like digital photo transmission have come into use.
And more recently, the absence of wars and other world crises (as well as more modest budgets for reporting from abroad) has forced many photojournalists to make celebrities just for a living.
Big money to be made. Two weeks before Diana's death, the Globe tabloid carried eight pages of photographs of her and Dodi Fayed on their holiday off the island of Sardinia, boasting to readers that they had paid $210,000 for them: “It was a big reward for the photographer Mario. Brenna, who earns up to $3 million worldwide.”
Lured by such sums, the paparazzi resort to increasingly aggressive tactics – sometimes even provoking confrontations with the stars to capture tantrums on film. “A year or so ago, there was a real increase in invasive kinds of images,” says Valerie Virga, photo editor for the National Enquirer, “people who are really going over the edge to get a picture — climbing rooftops, scaling buildings, super-super-long lenses into backyards people. For this reason, we have rejected hundreds of images over the past year.”
American photographers accuse their European counterparts of upping the ante. "They're ruthless," says Scott Downie, owner of Celebrity Photo, an agency that covers official showbiz events. “Those who came here in the 1980s laughed at us as babies: 'You don't know how to take a good photo. We're here to get them in private, not in diamonds at an event.”
Still, every paparazzo knows the pressure. "It's collective hysteria," says Mark Saunders, who has covered Diana for the past five years. "It's a rush of adrenaline and the desperate need to take a picture. I saw [U.S. photographers] in action in front of John Kennedy Jr.'s home. If America wants a tragedy of the same magnitude, let it continue."
Saunders says Diana's death confirmed the decision he made six months ago to get out of the paparazzi game altogether. But most of the other paparazzi and the agencies that hire them and sell their photos to magazines were in isolation or unrepentant last week. "I feel no responsibility, legal or moral," says Goksin Sipahioglu, director of the Paris-based Sipa agency. “Of course, I'm sad because someone we all adored is dead. But when you become Princess Di, you are a public figure."
Ironically, several agencies representing the photographers detained by French police after the accident did not release their photos to the press. And some agencies supplying Dodi and Diana's images to magazines last week specifically asked not to be given them a conventional line of credit.
Still, editors of publications that rely on the paparazzi are taking a new look at how far their intrusive tactics should be allowed to go. Shortly after the accident, Steve Coz, the editor of the National Enquirer, publicly vowed not to buy any photos taken at the crime scene, while also claiming that his tabloid had instituted a policy a year earlier not to use so-called stalkerazzi images.
Dan Schwartz, editorial director of the more freewheeling Globe, also promised to tighten standards. "We're going to be more conservative in our assessment of what offends people because we have to," he said. "People's awareness of what paparazzi is and what it isn't has been raised."
Mainstream publications are hardly exempt from the debate. Dozens of publications, including TIME and Newsweek, used the paparazzi footage to illustrate their stories about last week's tragedy. A news photo of Diana's two sons spotted in a car after her death - a shot that could easily be considered disturbing - also appeared in the sober New York Times.
Although editors and publishers say it is difficult to set clear rules, the tragedy has heightened their sensitivity to the issue. "You have to exercise judgment when you know competing forces will exercise less judgment and less taste," says Mort Zuckerman, publisher of the New York Daily News.
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