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General News    H2'ed 4/11/14

‘Marching on Pistorious:’ Athlete and Democracy On Trial in South Africa

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The coverage of him as been mosty negative although he has fought back with his own communications team with a Twitter feed,  @OscarHardTruth , designed to give "factual updates" on the trial. Its profile reads, "Truth Shall Prevail. Innocent until Proven Guilty."  "http://www.oscarpistorius.com  . In just 24 hours, it had over 16 400 followers, but only follows 28 -- mostly international media outlets.

South Africa's Media Monitor, Media Tenor, said that the local media is trying him as well as the court. According to researcher, Minnette Nieuwoudt, "my instinct tells me the media likes a damsel-in-distress type of story. The outright victim is something that resonates with a lot of people. The fact that she was very beautiful, it made her a bit of an icon.

Pistorius, on the other hand, started getting increasingly negative coverage over the months after the shooting.

"There seemed to be a slight change in the tonality. Also, with regards to Oscar, he was initially compared to fallen sport heroes -- then this changed to a more the general criminal comparison. First, he was an athlete who stumbled. Now, he's a criminal, who used to be an athlete," said Nieuwoudt."

But even as the world focuses on his courtroom tears and the aggressive and often bungled prosecution that aims to show the dark side of this Olympic hero, other issues of perhaps worst crimes in South Africa draw little interest from the global media machine.

2014 is the twentieth anniversary of South Africa's "freedom" and the coming of democracy. It is an election year with national campaign underway pitting President Jacob Zuma, who was once part of the African National Congress's armed struggle, and a popular if controversial/detested politician seeking reelection  against a number of challengers.

Zuma is carrying lots of baggage because of a current theft of public monies for private use scandal involving lavish improvements on his home compound, and an earlier rape case.

The ANC has a serious political challenge as well.

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News Dissector Danny Schechter is blogger in chief at Mediachannel.Org He is the author of PLUNDER: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books) available at Amazon.com. See Newsdisssector.org/store.htm.
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