Indeed, I consider it quite likely this is possible. News and media are famous for copying and not doing own research. A logic result is that media keep copying "the anonymous Banksy" as some meme. And that hardly any budget is released to actually research the person behind the name. Defending your anonimity against the very few journalists that do their own research is probably much simpler than defending it against the supposed "hordes of media".
We've seen this with "Satoshi" too. And even worldfamous artists like Daft Punk keep a reasonable privacy this way.
Well Daft Punk are different. They are very well known, and they don't hide their identities any more than a voice actor for a cartoon is hiding their identity.
Satoshi as far as I know is still unknown, and while there are some pretty good guesses, they will most likely never be more than that.
Why not?