A new word a day:
Paparazzi is a plural term (paparazzo being the singular form) for 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" as a pejorative term while news agencies commonly use the word in a broader sense to describe all photographers who take pictures of people of note.
Origin
The word paparazzi was popularized after the Federico Fellini 1960 film La dolce vita. One of the characters in the film is a news photographer named Paparazzo (played by Walter Santesso). In his book Word and Phrase Origins, author Robert Hendrickson writes that Fellini took the name paparazzi from an Italian dialect word for a particularly noisy, buzzing mosquito. In his school days, Fellini remembered a boy who was nicknamed "Paparazzo" (Mosquito), because of his fast talking and constant movements, a name Fellini later applied to the fictional character in La dolce vita.
Restrictions
Due to the reputation of paparazzi as an annoyance, some states and countries (particularly within Europe) restrict their activities by passing laws and curfews, and by staging events in which paparazzi are specifically allowed to take photographs. In Germany and France photographers need the permission of the people in their photographs.
The presence of paparazzi is not always seen as annoying; the arranger of an event may, in order to make the guests feel important, hire a number of actors who pretend they are paparazzi (so-called "faux-paparazzi"). This was, for instance, seen at extravaganza events during the dot-com boom
Paparazzi sell their work to dozens of magazines and newspapers that publish such photos for their readers and subscribers, and many paparazzi feel that they are helping celebrities and public figures in general by increasing their visibility. Photographers often earn large sums of money for a valuable picture.
Some observers blamed paparazzi for the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi Al-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 a drugged and drunken driver named 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)."[7] 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."
Some have argued that it is the paparazzi who "make" people celebrities, but very often, the celebrities attempt to act as if they hate and fear the paparazzi. Some paparazzi have responded that if a celebrity, who sought out fame in becoming a celebrity, wants privacy, they shouldn't leave their homes (forgetting that some do it for money, love of acting or any number of other reasons).
The E! network program Celebrities Uncensored used often-confrontational footage of celebrities made by paparazzi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paparazzi
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