Paparazzi have become a stable part of today’s media. If a celebrity is aiming to have a private wedding in Santa Barbara, you can be sure that there will be paparazzi waiting for them. At each destination, wedding photographers will have their cameras ready to snap a picture of the happy couple. While the nature of invading one’s privacy would be morally questionable to most of the public, members of the paparazzi are always on the lookout for photos that could generate those millions of dollars. When it comes to this kind of money, questions of morality and ethics tend to take a backseat.
While you might expect tabloid journalists to feel a pang of guilt about their behavior, most see themselves as fulfilling a public wish. This can hardly be denied, as the popularity of magazines selling pictures of celebrities without makeup, with their family, or, for that matter, getting married is staggering. These images allow readers to move past the heavily made-up, airbrushed, and generally “fake” celebrities, and see that those we idolize as somehow above us are human after all.
The invention of the Internet seems to have increased the popularity of tabloid journalism. While newspapers are slowly suffering an increasingly dismal loss in sales, many substantial news reporters have been thrown out of work. However, for those who provide celebrity gossip and photos, there is plenty of work available, and even respected newspapers have tabloid journalism fronting their websites. The question why this happens can be easily answered: the lives of celebrities attract a larger number of readers.
Think of the great weddings of recent times, like Brad and Angelina, Tom and Kate, Jennifer and Ben. The bride and groom at each of these weddings were very careful to control the media presence at these events. In fact, these celebrities saw fit to take control of the way their wedding is portrayed, agreeing that only certain reporters have access to their wedding and that these reporters agree to a set version of events to bring to the newsroom.
This control of the media has become necessary due to the pressure that celebrities feel to provide information to their fans. Each of the three couples mentioned above also took it upon themselves to release some pre-approved photos of their weddings to the media, in order to express their need for pictures of the event and lessen the value of the paparazzi images they may have. has been taken.
The nature of paparazzi today has become unnecessarily invasive. However, the deeper question to be considered here is why there is a desire for “normal” individuals to scrutinize the private lives of others. As long as this need exists, the paparazzi will always have an audience of paying customers. As long as the money is there, someone will be willing to step into uncertain ethical territory to get the massive payday on offer.