The murder of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on October 2 has tripped off one of the grandest cascades of news copy, electronic and print, in many weeks, and perhaps even many months. Why is that?
Several reasons come to mind. First, the deed itself was both gruesome and spectacular, surprising and utterly beyond the pale of civilized diplomatic protocol. Mainstream media markets in the United States—and, to a lesser extent, in the West generally—love that sort of thing because it registers high on the all-critical shock meter. The fact that Khashoggi allegedly entered the Consulate in order to secure a document necessary to enable his marriage to a Turkish woman, knowingly putting himself at some risk as she tells the tale, just makes the plot line juicier for an audience that has become increasingly challenged by the task of untangling reality from fiction. Then there ensued for several days an undulating uncertainty about what actually happened, revelations of the existence of surreptitious Turkish tapes promising to reveal the Truth, and the subsequent lateral entry of the CIA into the investigatory mix, amid howls of righteous indignation from assorted congressmen and journalists. So the plot thickened, the decibel level rose, and the drama intensified. Think of it: murder and much blood courtesy of a bone saw; love and certainly sex implied; Oriental intrigue, jet-set hit squads, and high-tech eavesdropping in diplomatic inner sancta. This is market share manna from entertainment heaven for mainstream media. No wonder they played it to the hilt.
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