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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?”

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