Hush, Hush

In space, no one can hear you scream. But in cyberspace everyone can hear you whisper.

Yep, there’s possibly another sex scandal on the horizon. The Atlantic’s Matthew Yglesias came across some journalist/author scuttlebutting on his blog about how the Los Angeles Times has some information about a presidential candidate and isn’t quite sure what to do with it.

The fellow who posted the information, Ron Rosenbaum—an “acclaimed journalist,” according to a blurb on Amazon—got wind of something from a proverbial “well-connected media person” about the story:

So I was down in DC this past weekend and happened to run into a well-connected media person, who told me flatly, unequivocally that “everyone knows” The LA Times was sitting on a story, all wrapped up and ready to go about what is a potentially devastating sexual scandal involving a leading Presidential candidate. “Everyone knows” meaning everyone in the DC mainstream media political reporting world. “Sitting on it” because the paper couldn’t decide the complex ethics of whether and when to run it. The way I heard it they’d had it for a while but don’t know what to do. The person who told me (not an LAT person) knows I write and didn’t say “don’t write about this”.

If it’s true, I don’t envy the LAT. I respect their hesitation, their dilemma, deciding to run or not to run it raises a lot of difficult journalism ethics questions and they’re likely to be attacked, when it comes out—the story or their suppression of the story—whatever they do.

First, allow me to stress the caveat he tossed in: “If it’s true.” I don’t know Ron Rosenbaum – I mean, aside from all that positive press his publisher writes for him – and I don’t know if I know his well-connected media person friend, so … who knows.

But this isn’t a column asking “Who could it be?” Rather, this is asking “How long can a rumor like this stay underground in the current leaky/bloggy/competitive environment of MediaLand?”

Rumors like this, Beltway cocktail party chatter stuff, used to be the domain of the ‘insiders.’ They would share their scoops, potentially get corroboration from people who’d heard the same thing, and move forward (or not) on a story depending on sourcing and the always-nebulous “news merit.”

Then along came Matt Drudge, who broke a story online about a certain White House intern, when a national news magazine was reluctant to do so. (Much like the Los Angeles Times in the current scenario.) And now – a full decade after that – the media landscape has stretched a lot wider with bloggers and cable networks and YouTubers, ratcheting up the pressure on traditional media.

And this leads us back to today. Whether or not this particular rumor bears any fruit, there’s bound to be one in the future – much as there were questions asked about Senator Larry Craig online before the other shoe dropped. (Or tapped.) And as lurid as the Craig story was, the competitive pressures were relatively low since it was an under-the-radar Senator.

But what about a story about a candidate for national office? The normal question of “Is it news?” still exists, but it doesn’t exist in a vacuum any longer. The old school guys don’t get to decide the answer unilaterally anymore. If anything, they're under the gun more than ever to get whatever information they have 'out there' in order to get credit for the exclusive.

Whether it’s the 2008 election or the 2012 cycle, there’s bound to be a rumor that gains enough steam through the alternative or new media that it stirs discussion nationwide. How will the mainstream media deal with that? How will we react?