Britney Spears may be able to do one thing, besides sing, that Princess Diana never could.
The pop singer’s recent bout with mental illness played out in front of millions, her disturbed life cannibalized by the paparazzi trying to get the money shot.
The ambulance set to take her from her Los Angeles home to the hospital needed a police escort and helicopters to keep the paparazzi at bay. Had Spears suffered a life-threatening injury, say a gunshot wound, she may have bled out on the way to the emergency room.
The insensitivity to Spears’ plight showed that the picture is now worth more than 1,000 words. It’s worth more than someone’s life.
The Los Angeles City Council took note, and is considering a city ordinance that would require paparazzi to stay at least 20 yards away from high-profile celebrities.
Councilman Dennis Zine wants to create “public safety zones,” a “personal safety bubble,” if you will, that would keep the photographers at a safe distance, Newsmax.com reported. The fury around Spears’ ambulance poses “a hazard to both celebrities and ordinary people,” he said.
And that was her trip to the hospital. After her release, Spears tried to leave the hospital in her own vehicle and nearly ran over the photographers pressed against the car’s glass.
The ordinance, coined “Britney’s Law,” would be the most stringent anti-paparazzi, Newsmax.com reported, ever enacted. If the law is broken, the city would confiscate any profits made from the publication of the photograph taken within the “personal safety bubble.”
An immediate outcry could be heard from First Amendment advocates arguing their right to take pictures of anything they deem news. That’s debatable, too, whether a star’s mental breakdown is newsworthy.
Magazine sales prove that theory perhaps.
The law wouldn’t prohibit the taking of the photographs, just the distance at which they were taken.
Journalists concede the “safe distance” zones all the time. Times Record News photographers capture compelling photographs of house fires, raging floods, car accidents and bank robberies, all from a safe distance. To you, it may appear he was right there, nearly singed by the blaze.
You’re so close to the action, you can see the sweat on an athlete’s face as he winds up to pitch. But the photographer’s not on the pitcher’s mound. The power of a good lens gives you that perspective.
A safe distance could be kept and the photographer could still get the money shot.
The one potential problem we see with the law is in the perception of “safe distance.” Say a photographer stays 20 yards away, as required, but the resulting photograph comes out so crisp and seemingly up close, the council deems it contraband, assuming the worst.
Will the burden of proof be on the photographer, the high-profile star or the city council?
Nothing’s been learned from the death of Princess Diana, chased by paparazzi through a tunnel in Paris and killed when her drunk driver tried to outrun them. That could be seen in the frenzy surrounding Spears’ car last week.
If the paparazzi were ordered to stay 20 yards away, you’d still get to see, crisp and up close, what a mental breakdown looks like — if you so choose.
Source: What is able to do Britney
