Pretoria - Shrien Dewani's return to South Africa to face murder charges has seen his trial share the media spotlight with the Oscar Pistorius murder trial, media monitoring group DDI said on Monday.
“The extradition of Dewani tomorrow (Tuesday) means that at least one in five articles, covering the two murders, focus on Dewani. This stat (was) taken from (the last) 24 hours of SA news,” Data Driven Insight said.
The data was collected between 4pm on Sunday and 4pm on Monday.
Between the two trials, Dewani registered 22.19 percent while Pistorius garnered 77.18 percent.
Dewani is due to make his first appearance in a South African court on Tuesday morning following extended extradition proceedings.
He claims he and his wife Anni were kidnapped at gunpoint as they drove through Gugulethu in Cape Town in a taxi in November 2010.
He was released unharmed while his wife's dead body was found in the abandoned car the next day. She had been shot dead.
Paralympic athlete Pistorius is on trial for the murder of his model and law graduate girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
He shot her dead through a locked toilet door at his Pretoria home on Valentine's Day last year. He claims he mistook her for an intruder.
Public Protector Thuli Madonsela's report on President Jacob Zuma's private Nkandla homestead had also remained in the news.
“(President) Jacob Zuma accounts for almost one third of the press measuring, (with those measured being) Thuli Madonsela, Oscar Pistorius and the South African president.”
The Pistorius trial measured 51.55 percent, Madonsela received 15.57 percent and Zuma received 31.98 percent.
Publicity surrounding Pistorius' trial reached its second-highest peak by 4pm on Monday, with over 67 000 unique items generated.
Pistorius took the stand at the High Court in Pretoria on Monday. His testimony was expected to continue on Tuesday.
“It is likely the coverage (of the trial) today (Monday) will exceed all media days during the trial,” DDI said.
A week-by-week analysis of the Pistorius trial showed that week six, this week, would likely be the trial's biggest media generation week.
Over the course of the trial, the first week saw 31.95 percent of the trial's total media generation take place. Week two was 26.64 percent, week three 15.46 percent, week four 16.1 percent, and week five 1.6 percent.
While week six had only seen Monday pass, it already accounted for 8.25 percent of total media generated over the course of the trial.
Between State prosecutor Gerrie Nel and Pistorius' lawyer Barry Roux, Nel received 63.36 percent of coverage versus Roux's 36.64
percent.
DDI said over the last 24 hours, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Australia yielded the most publicity regarding the Pistorius trial, with South Africa placed sixth, tied with France.
Sapa