Is the Los Angeles Times sitting on a sex scandal story about a certain presidential candidate that could blow the campaign wide open?
Rumors about the story – which apparently does not involve a certain guy who gets $300 haircuts — have been circulating in Washington for some time. The story apparently is ready, which means that it has been checked, double-checked and lawyered, but the Times apparently doesn’t know when or whether to let it rip.
This prompts Ron Rosenbaum, a PajamasMedia blogger, to opine:
“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.”
Having been in the same position myself as a newspaper editor, although the stories certainly were not as high stakes, I quite agree. In one instance we hesitated and got scooped by another publication. In another we ran with the story, which generated more criticism for the paper than the philandering pol.
Rosenbaum continues:
“It raises all sorts of ethical questions. What about private sexual behavior is relevant? What about a marriage belongs in the coverage of a presidential campaign? Does it go to the judgment of the candidate in question? Didn’t we all have a national nervous breakdown over these questions nearly a decade ago?”
More here.