Is Mk 16:8 “[The women] said nothing to anyone” an excuse to explain why readers only now are hearing of the empty tomb discovery?

We read at the end of Mark’s gospel… >• Mk 16:5-8 — Entering the [empty] tomb [of Jesus], [the women] saw a young man sitting at the right, wearing a white robe; and they were amazed. And he said to them, “Do not be amazed; you are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who has been crucified. He has risen; He is not here; behold, here is the place where they laid Him. But go, tell His disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see Him, just as He told you.’” They went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had gripped them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. And while Bibles have additional text after v.8 in brackets, those brackets indicate the fact that the following text is widely regarded to be a late inauthentic addition. That is to say, the Gospel of Mark ends with quoted material above.

So here is our question:
Did Mark dishonestly intimate to his readers in c. AD 70 that the reason they were only now learning of the women’s empty tomb discovery is because, after their having found Jesus’ empty tomb, the women simply fled the scene and perpetually “said nothing to anyone”. Alternatively, did Mk’s audience already encounter the report, but because of its dubious and awkward recency they were suspicious of it and this report that they “said nothing to anyone” is Mk’s attempt to invent details that would set their mind at ease, to help them accept it?

There seems to be dispute on the popularity of this explanation. At roughly the same time both of the following estimates about scholarly consensus were published:
>• Peter Carnley: “This view is very widely held ….” [The Structure of Resurrection Belief (Oxford, 1987), 51.]
• William Lane Craig: “[It] is now widely rejected as implausible” [“The Historicity of the Empty Tomb of Jesus.” New Testament Studies 31 (1985): 39-67.]

Certainly there has been no shortage of advocates in the 50s to 70s:
>• Rudolf Bultmann: “v7 ‘they said nothing to anyone’] can originally have referred only to the discovery of the empty tomb and can ‘give an answer to the question of why the women’s story of the empty tomb remained unknown for so long’”. [History of the Synoptic Tradition trans. by Marsh (Harper, 1963), 285.]
• G. W. H. Lampe: “The fact that the women do not pass the message on may suggest that the evangelist, or his source, knew that the story of the tomb and the angel was not part of the original Easter proclamation and had only developed at a relatively late stage in the tradition.” [The Resurrection: A Dialogue (Westminster , 1966), 48.]
• Wilhelm Bousset: “It is supposed to give an answer to the question why the story of the women at the empty tomb remained unknown for so long.” [Kyrios Christos trans. by Steely (Abingdon, 1970), 106.] Nevertheless, my impression is that it’s only popular among a minority of scholars who are especially minimalistic with respect to the historical reliability of the gospels. Most take for granted that Mk meant the women “said nothing to anyone [on the way]”.