In defence of paparazzi

'For who are the paparazzi but photo-journalists determined to go anywhere, any time, for pictures to satisfy the global market in the fleetingly remarkable'.

I was on holiday when Diana, Princess of Wales was killed. Following a story like that from a distance is like eavesdropping on a conversation at the next table. You catch some of the words, but long to be closer to pick up the missing detail. Still even when Dutch and Greek papers were all that were left among the suntan lotion and straw hats, no one could mistake the underlying message of that dreadful week: Diana had been hounded to death by a class of news gatherer that the rest of the population considered beneath contempt.

What surprised me was the ease with which all other journalists managed to put distance between themselves and the despised paparazzi. For who are the paparazzi but photo-journalists determined to go anywhere, any time, for pictures to satisfy the global market in the fleetingly remarkable to which, in one way or another, we all belong? One of the photographers, I read, was not long back from Bosnia. Hero one day, villain the next.

This whiff of double standards was reinforced a few days later when I arrived back to help judge the long list of entries for this year's Rory Peck Award. I didn't know Rory myself, but several of my fellow judges did, and I had a good sense of the man by the end of the day.

For several hours we viewed films of arduous journeys through sweaty jungle or rough mountain, nerve-wracking brushes with a seen or unseen enemy, dazzling gun battles patently shot by someone in the line of fire - and every now and then someone would murmur: 'That's Rory. Just like him.'

Indeed the long day's judging revealed many Rorys around the world. The technology of cameras and the squeeze on budgets have combined to help them multiply. Men and women, they travel light into places where most staffers don't like to, or live on permanent standby for the agencies in the world's worst trouble spots.

Algeria, Zaire, Sudan, Colombia, Afghanistan, Cambodia. The list seemed endless, most of them places where a foot wrong can be anything between singularly awkward and terminally dangerous.

The scoop of the year was the trial of Pol Pot, witnessed for the world by Nate Thayer and David McKaige - but at least they were there to witness it by invitation.

One of the more extraordinary pieces came from East Timor - a documentary first aired on ABC TV's Foreign Correspondent in Sydney in April this year. The rebels hiding in the forest from Indonesian troops, talked in frightened whispers. You knew it wasn't staged for Chantal Abouchar's camera when you saw their eyes: that was real fear that made them wince when a twig cracked under foot.

Another memorable sequence came from Gaza where Reuters freelance, Shams Odeh, stood unflinchingly in the middle of a gun battle between Israeli troops and Palestinians. What made his courage even more remarkable was that he'd already been wounded twice on earlier assignments, once by either side. No wonder the biography sent in with his entry, said his biggest wish was to work as a cameraman somewhere outside the Gaza strip.

Not that I would have chosen to inflict the assignment of the third finalist, Will Daws, on him for comfort. His sequences of the cruelty inflicted on pigs in British abattoirs - shot secretly for Channel 4's Countryside Undercover - left one feeling very worried for Daws well-being if a trailing wire had given the game away.

Our job seemed almost impossible, judging between these and many other examples of the risks people take to feed extreme video to hungry editors.

The endurance shown, for instance, by Laurent Hamida, who followed the Taliban forces the length of Afghanistan; the coolness of Yannis Koligliatis under fire in Cyprus; or the enterprise of Christian Sterley who strapped a tiny camera to his side to reveal how child prostitutes were got ready for sale to sex tourists in Cambodia.

As the list of Rory' s deserving colleagues lengthened I began to think not about the difference between them but about what they all had in common.

Deep down, were they so different from the reviled paparazzi? They evidently had different interests. Death, suffering, gunfire, adventure, rather than a princess's night out with her new lover. But they were all at the sharp end of the news supply chain where the going is tough.

At the comfy end are the editors. It's they who create the market and define where photo-journalists spend their nights, sweltering or shivering, waiting to get the images that count.

Maybe a few of them should have stood up and taken a bow, that sad night in Paris.

George Carey is deputy chief executive of Mentorn Barraclough Carey

Chairman of the jury, George Carey