Damn PAPARAZZI!

Papazarri are photographers who take candid photographs of celebrities, usually by relentlessly shadowing them in their public and private activities. Celebrities claiming to have been hounded by such photographers often use "paparazzi" and even "stalkarazzi" as a pejorative term.

Some observers blamed paparazzi for the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed, who were killed in 1997 in a high-speed car accident in Paris, France, while being pursued by paparazzi. Although several paparazzi were briefly taken into custody, no one was ever convicted, and the official French investigation of the crash concluded that they had not caused the accident, and in fact the cause of the accident was the drugged and drunken driver Henri Paul.

In 1999, the Oriental Daily News of Hong Kong was found guilty of "scandalizing the court", an extremely rare criminal charge that the newspaper's conduct would undermine confidence in the administration of justice. The charge was brought after the newspaper had published abusive articles challenging the judiciary's integrity and accusing it of bias in a lawsuit the paper had instigated over a photo of a pregnant Faye Wong. The paper had also arranged for a "puppy team" to track a judge for 72 hours, to provide the judge with first-hand experience with what paparazzi do.

Time Magazine (Style & Design) in 2005 ran a story entitled "Shooting Stars", in which Mel Bouzad, one of the top paparazzi in Los Angeles at the time, claimed to have made US$150,000 for a picture of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez in Georgia after their breakup. "If I get a picture of Britney and her baby," Bouzad claimed, "I'll be able to buy a house in those hills (above Sunset Boulevard)." Paparazzi author Peter Howe told Time that "celebrities need a higher level of exposure than the rest of us so it is a two-way street. The celebrities manipulate."