The murder trial of Oscar Pistorius began on an unusually rainy day in March, drenching the journalists who came from around the world to cover the story of a fallen hero.
The journalist hordes — your GlobalPost correspondent among them — scurried like drowning rats through flooded streets around Pretoria’s High Court, desperate to safeguard a seat at the "trial of the century."
On Friday a judge found Pistorius guilty of culpable homicide, a lesser charge roughly equivalent to manslaughter. Sentencing is still to come. There is no minimum punishment for the crime, which could carry jail time of up to 15 years — or as little as a suspended sentence. It is easy to be cynical about the Pistorius trial. The Twitter echo chamber can be irritating indeed — a courtroom full of journalists sharing their every trivial observation. Some of my esteemed colleagues have smugly — and to a large degree, correctly — remarked on how little attention is paid to other worthy stories while news outlets have spent lavishly to send their journalists to this courthouse.
INC News, 12/09/2014
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