She assures him that they are real but in the middle of their conversation they have their picture taken by a paparazzo.
It may be a journalist or a paparazzo (if that is the right singular) or against any other wrongdoer.
Others deal with plural forms that, for the time being, most writers who think about the subject prefer to maintain as plural, such as criteria, paparazzi, and phenomena.
The star lived almost all of his life under the scrutiny of the paparazzi, which led to issues later in his life.