Paparazzi

Everyone was a star at Maryland Public Television's "Gala '99." As guests arrived at the MPT studios for its 30th anniversary celebration, they were greeted by "paparazzi" (actors posing as photographers and reporters).But the stardom didn't stop there. Some party-goers were interviewed on camera by MPT personality (and event honorary chair) Rhea Feikin, while others had a chance to try anchoring a mock news show, as they toured the MPT facilities.Among the 420 "stars" basking in the spotlight: Carole Sibel and Sharon Nevins, event co-chairs; Rob Shuman, MPT's CEO; Connie Caplan, chair of Maryland Public Broadcasting Commission; Louis Rukeyser, "Wall $treet Week" host; John Waters, Baltimore filmmaker; Frank Burch, chairman of the Piper & Marbury law firm; Cheryl Lockhart, BGE director of corporate contributions; and Earl Arnette, operations director at Arbros Communications.

WASHINGTON -- Ever since Britain's Princess Diana died in a Paris tunnel as her chauffeur tried to outrun a pack of paparazzi, the nation has been torn between its appetite for candid pictures of famous people and its distaste for the methods used to get them. Lawmakers have tried for years to rein in a tabloid media and still protect the public's right to know, each time running afoul of the First Amendment.But legislation sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and slated for introduction later this month could turn the tables in the skirmishes between the famous and the photographers who pursue them -- not to mention assuage the conscience of a nation hopelessly star-struck, but still believing that even celebrities need some space.

PAPARAZZI have gotten a bad name since the death of Princess Diana, but that didn't stop New York's Robert Miller gallery from opening a show dedicated to tabloid photography last week.The show presented about 60 vintage photographs from the genre's golden age during the decade 1954-1964, and a like number of fashion and society pictures taken between 1964 and 1997.Gallery officials were at pains to point out the show had been planned months ago with no intent to capitalize on the publicity surrounding Diana's death.

Barbara Walters interviews one of the oddest and most hunted men on the planet tonight on "20/20" (10 p.m.-11 p.m., WMAR, Channel 2).In light of the death of Princess Diana, Walters centers on the way Michael Jackson has dealt with intrusive press coverage and his thoughts on growing up in the public eye. Some samples of what he has to say:On selling his baby's pictures to the National Enquirer: "There's helicopters flying above us, flying over my house,...

DON Crutchfield dived into the chicken salad, telling his stories between bites. In his navy blue sports jacket, blue polo shirt, blue jeans and brown loafers, he looked every bit like Joe Average. And you can bet that's the way he wanted it.Crutchfield, you see, has to blend in. He's a private investigator, a job he's had for the past 35 years."I once tailed a woman for six months," Crutchfield said, "and she never knew I was tailing her." In that incident Crutchfield was following the woman to get evidence for her husband of her infidelity.

GOD BLESS Rabbi Martin Siegel. The Columbia clergyman's heart was in the right place last week when he asked supermarket chains to remove tabloids from their checkout counters.Rabbi Siegel argues, as many do, that tabloid exploitation of celebrities was responsible for Princess Diana's tragic death. He wants to remove these scandal sheets from the public's consciousness by convincing stores to hide them.Shoppers who delight in celebrity gossip would have to search the aisles for their weekly fix, if the rabbi has his way.Rabbi Siegel, who led the Columbia Jewish Congregation for 25 years, says Princess Diana's death brings a "window of opportunity" for change, and he intends to take advantage.

By the time you read this Princess Diana's funeral may already be several hours old. Soon she will be buried. What will not be buried are the various allegations about exactly who, if anyone, was responsible for the crash that killed her, her fiance and her driver.Initial reports targeted the paparazzi, the free-lance photographers who hounded the princess with the same fanaticism with which Ahab hunted Moby Dick. It was while trying to elude the paparazzi, we were told, that the driver of Princess Di's and Dodi Al Fayed's Mercedes crashed.

Some of us still recall a woman named Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who was the Princess Diana of her day. In my misspent youth, I worked for one of the British newspapers when the world's paparazzi were chasing Jackie and trying to catch her in some dreadful act of being human.Back then, Rupert Murdoch had just bought the London Sun and turned it into a tabloid, and must have been doing cartwheels when Jackie tried to sneak out of a New York movie theater but found a photographer named Ron Galella waiting for her.The movie she'd just seen was called "I Am Curious Yellow."

In London, motorists shouted profanities at photographers outside Buckingham Palace. At the Paris hospital where Princess Diana died early Sunday, the epithets were worse: "Murderers," medical staff shouted at the men and women with cameras outside. And at the tunnel where the fatal car crash occurred, angry mourners scrawled red graffiti labeling paparazzi cowards.What had seemed a sort of game -- though an increasingly aggressive one -- changed early Sunday when probably the world's most photographed woman died after trying to elude paparazzi on motorcycles.

LONDON -- They hide in bushes, they hang from helicopters, they ride motorboats in hot pursuit of their prey. They are the paparazzi, the determinedly resourceful free-lance photographers who provide the world's print media with photos of celebrities in private and public moments.And now the paparazzi are under attack, because of the death of Britain's Princess Diana early yesterday in an auto accident in Paris after a high-speed chase by French press photographers on motorcycles and in cars.