Tuesday evening i was sitting around my house in the living room watching television with all my roommates. We were just channel surfing and ended up watching sportscenter. A popular television show that airs on sportscenter is called E:60. The point of this show is having 5 or 6 of the ESPN journalists sit around a table and discuss stories that they have done specials on and then they all reflect and make comments about each of the specials. They play usually around 5 specials on each hour long show and they all are usually popular topics that are current in our world.
One of the reporters for ESPN did a special on the explosion of coverage of professional athletes and how it is becoming as big if not bigger to cover them rather than television and movie actors or musicians. Im sure that we have all heard of a website and TV show called TMZ. TMZ covers the lives of celebrities by following them with cameras at unsuspecting times or secretly photographing these individuals without them even knowing. TMZ is basically the paparazzi but a somewhat more popular version to the celebrities that they cover. The whole idea of the special was to show that not just celebrities are the ones being photographed and covered at all times but now it is transferring over to the sports world and people are going crazy over it. One of the first examples used was that of famous soccer player David Beckham. After he had signed to play with the MLS team, LA Galaxy, he was shortly after injured during a game. Every photographer wanted the shot of David Beckham limping out on crutches after getting off a flight. Only one photographer got the shot of Beckham and this photo earned him $20,000!!! He was paid $20,000 just to take a picture of a man going to his car. That is the celebrity that we have created and people want to see them at unexpected times doing anything. Another example that they used and was one of the hottest topics in the media at the time and still is was of course Tiger Woods and his cheating scandal. TMZ was first on the scene of Tiger's car crash outside his home the night his wife found out. Those pictures were sold at a very high price. After all the news came out of course everyone wanted pictures of Tiger, but no one knew where he was and could not find him anywhere. The bounty was out and photographers were literally sent around the world to find him because they knew what was at stake, cashing in on that first picture. After months of no Tiger a photographer snapped a shot of him walking out of a Sex Therapy facility in Mississippi. The cost of this photo to the press......$500,000. That is what someones privacy might be worth to the media!
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