I love press photographers, who for many decades brought alive scores of stories I wrote as a news reporter, including hundreds of front-page pieces over more than two decades at The Washington Times.

When Miss America 2003 Erika Harold had a dispute with the Miss America pageant because they would not allow her to continue her campaign as Miss Illinois to urge our country's youth - particularly "young ladies," her target group -- to abstain from drugs, sex, and alcohol, it was photographer Michael Connor whose marvelous images brought the story alive.

I broke the story when Miss Harold came to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. for her first press conference in the nation's capital a month after her September 2002 crowning as Miss America.

The headline written for the October 8, 2002 front-page story was a sizzler: "Miss America told to zip it on chastity talk." The subhead: "Says abstinence for teens frowned on as 'platform.'"

Michael Connor's front-page color photo showed a not happy yet gorgeous Miss America, and his inside black-and-white photo on the story jump-page was pure genius, showing Erika Harold frowning, hands on hips, after her Miss America Pageant handlers had remonstrated her again on the walk from the J.W. Marriott Hotel not to talk about abstinence.

Connor's picture was marvelous. He knew my story angle beforehand and got a perfect shot of a petulant and furious Erika Harold muzzled by beauty pageant pointy-heads. Thanks to good sources who told me the background, the muzzling was about to end and become a national story.

Miss Harold opened up publicly about the muzzling in response to questions, and was furious that a prior trip to New York City, where she visited the Anti-Defamation League, was being used by the ADL on its Web site, in concert with Miss America Pageant officials, to promote a gay-rights agenda, with her picture aside a story about the ADL's "anti-hate-speech" agenda in behalf of homosexuals.

Pageant officials tried to wave me off after the National Press Club media event concluded and Miss Harold asked me to show her the ADL Web site stuff, but she rebuffed her handlers and, to their visible dismay, continued a one-on-one interview where she straightforwardly acknowledged being pressured and muzzled on the abstinence issue.

The lid blew off after the publicity. Erika Harold told me afterwards that she was liberated by the story and pickup by other media, so throughout the rest of her reign as Miss America she was able to talk throughout the country in favor of teenage abstinence from sex, drugs and alcohol, as she wanted.

Journalism is war. But the initial breaking story would not have worked had it not been for Michael Connor's wonderful photos.

Michael and professionals like him, with whom I was privileged to work over many decades, are respectful of their photo subjects, civil and mannerly in all respects.

But out there on the press line, and in the countryside throughout the world, are photographers who are not respectful and civil, have no manners, and bring shame to all professional media photographers.

Their objective is to get a picture of a big-name person, or someone related in some way, to get smeared on the front of a tabloid and receive big bucks. They are called paparazzi.

These people have become photo terrorists who stake out photo targets in public and private situations, sneak around to photo people over walls and through the windows of their houses, on beaches, and in any situation where they can get titillating photos that can be plasted across pages of tabloid newspapers.

They are low-class disrespectful, unmannerly, abusive slobs who should be arrested for invasion of privacy and assault.

This is competitive journalism at its worst, and is destroying our people's history of respect for press freedom, because these paparazzi photographers have no respect for a person's privacy.

They have no manners or respect for other people and their rights. They push themselves into any public or private situation, making anyone famous for whatever reason feel threatened and intimidated, frightening their family members and children as they stake them out and push themselves in any public or private situation to get their selfish pictures.

The terrorist photographers, unlike the professionals I've been privileged to work with at traditional newspapers, press their cameras in people's faces as they step in and out of their houses or in any situation. They even try to take pictures up women's skirts - as they have done to the lovely Kate Middleton, girlfriend of England's 24-year-old Prince William, son of Prince Charles, Duke of Windsor, heir to the British throne, and the late lovely Lady Diana.

This is outrageous. Shame on these idiots, who destroy public respect for all professionals in the media. They must be stopped.

And if the media bosses of these photograph paparazzi will not rein them in and set out some standards of professional behavior and respect, then government clamp-down will ensue and infringe on the press freedom of all of us who are reporters, writers, editors and photographers throughout the media.

According to the London Sunday Telegraph, Prince William reported back January 8 for duty with his regiment, the Blues and Royals of the Household Cavalry, "a deeply troubled young man. Two separate, yet strangely inter-linked, issues will be dominating his thoughts. Kate Middleton, photographed last year, is a paparazzi target in the style of Diana, Princess of Wales.

"As 2nd Lieutenant Wales enters the regiment's barracks near Windsor Castle, he will be aware that, 25 miles away, in central London an inquest into his mother's death nearly 10 years ago is finally opening at the Royal Courts of Justice. According to friends, the Prince fleetingly considered going to the two-day preliminary hearing in person but concluded it would be 'inappropriate.' Instead, he and Prince Harry, have asked Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, their private secretary, to attend. Each evening the former SAS officer will brief the two princes by phone on the events of the day."

The story went on to report that Prince William was otherwise "very angry, enormously frustrated" and preoccupied over the ordeal of his girlfriend of three years, Kate Middleton, who has been subjected to "intensive, unceasing and unwelcome scrutiny from the paparazzi. The parallels between the treatment of her and of his mother are just too strong for the prince to ignore."

The Telegraph story by reporter Andrew Alderson said Miss Middleton steps out of the front door of her London row-house each day "to be confronted by up to a dozen telephoto lenses ... While some of the photographers stand on the street, others are hidden in blacked-out vans and still more are waiting on motorbikes, the 'snapper' on the pillion.

"Last week," Alderson reported, "for the first time, the bike riders had earpieces and were clearly co-ordinating their pursuit of their quarry military-style. As Miss Middleton goes to her blue VW Golf, parked near her home in Chelsea, west London, to make the seven-mile drive to work -- she is a buyer for the High Street chain Jigsaw and works in Kew -- she is followed by many of the paparazzi in the hope of snatching an unusual shot of her. If they get lucky, they could make up to £20,000 with a single image."

According to Matrix Syndication spokesman Trevor Adams, Alderson reported that big picture agencies that send their photographs to magazines and newspapers around the world view Miss Middleton as "the new Diana."

"We were with Lady Di every day at this stage until the engagement was announced," Adams told the Telegraph. "It will be the same for Kate, but we will not hound her."

Alderson reported that last week the paparazzi had some early-morning luck. "As Miss Middleton, who will be 25 on Tuesday, emerged from her home on Wednesday, a warden gave her a £100 parking ticket. She managed a wry smile -- and within minutes, digital photographs of the occasion were being dispatched around the world."

London's tabloids, capitalizing on the reaction of Prince William and Miss Middleton to threats against their privacy, reported that Miss Middleton was receiving preferential treatment from the police, including a 10-police guard "as engagement rumors grow."

The Telegraph said the stories have infuriated Prince William and all the royal family.

"The papers stated that, as Miss Middleton, accompanied by Prince William, had left Boujis nightclub in west London in the early hours of Friday, she had a team of officers to protect her. Yet, as a member of the public with no formal royal role, she was not entitled to a police guard. A senior royal aide said that any suggestion of special treatment for Miss Middleton was ludicrous. 'Like any member of the public, Kate Middleton is entitled to protection from harassment and the increasingly aggressive behavior of the paparazzi.'

"Another royal courtier said: 'Kate is a bright, down-to-earth young woman but there is a limit to how much more of this she can take. The situation is becoming unbearable.'"

Prince William and Miss Middleton met and developed a close relationship as students at St. Andrews University in Scotland.

The Telegraph reported that Prince William and Michael Middleton, Miss Middleton's multi-millionaire father, are discussing ways to use a landmark 2004 court ruling won by Princess Caroline of Monaco in Strasbourg, which prevented the German press from publishing photographs of her and her children. The ruling stated that German courts had failed to prevent implicit violation of her privacy if the images were published.

The Telegraph reported that attorney Gerrard Tyrrell of Harbottle & Lewis in London, Prince Charles' media lawyer, who also is representing Miss Middleton, has written letters to newspapers and magazines urging restraint and reminding them that, if they use paparazzi photographs, they must take responsibility for the photographers' abusive and intrusive behavior violating privacy.

So Prince William and the British royal family are preparing to push back legally through the British courts against the photographer paparazzi hordes.

"Sooner, rather than later, push will come to shove," the Telegraph reported, according to royal aides, and the legal firm is preparing to lodge a formal complaint of invasion of privacy -- "a clear-cut case that they feel they cannot lose."

The result hopefully will throw a rocket into hearts of lucrative supermarket tabloids in Britain and the United States that tell lies about celebrities and public people generally, write untrue stories, and doctor them with paparazzi pictures blazed across their front pages.

These tabloids and TV copy-cats bring shame to legitimate journalism. A pox on them. And thanks to Prince William, whose family is the richest in the world, for taking on these scabs in defense of his lovely girlfriend's privacy and their relationship.

There is one other point made by Lady Diana's favorite priest in a message to yours truly regarding the paparazzi and behavior of her sons, Princes William and Harry: "I think also someone should remind the princes of their confirmation vows. (They were confirmed when at Eton.) They solemnly promised 'to renounce the devil and all his works. The pomps and vanity of this wicked world, and all the sinful lusts of the flesh.' Christians might not always live up to that, of course, but they should at least be told firmly that's what being a Christian entails."

The princes' mother was close to Father Frank Julian Gelli, her parish priest near Kensington Palace in London, right up to her unfortunate death in the Paris car crash. He surely gave Lady Diana similar gentle remonstration regarding her extra-marital relationship with boyfriend Dodi Fayed, who died with her.

Father Frank said the Church of England authorities should "gently remind" William and Harry that they are Christian princes. "But what do I say?" he wrote. "The C-of-E panjandrums? They are too sunk in apostasy and corruption, alas."