For the Record: I Was Proved F*ing Right

Used this back in 2018.

Or at least that's where Professor Rosen seems to have ended up, though he doesn't seem clear himself whether he's saying it or not:

Here's the AP: "Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure deal was thrown in doubt Friday as Republican senators felt 'blindsided' by his insistence that it must move in tandem with his bigger package." https://t.co/1PhLSHt4ao

Again: Why did @AP buy the "we were blindsided" gambit? 2/2

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) June 26, 2021

I posed it as a question because I don't know. The reporting of this "deal" was confusing. Some reports said 21 Senators including 11 Republicans were on board with the concept. The Times and Post said only five Republicans for the deal with Biden. Then came "we were blindsided."

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) June 26, 2021

That is: he seems to have accepted the basic accuracy of Thursday's Reuters report, and the existence of the Group of 21 including 11 Republican senators that signed off on the "bipartisan" track of Biden's two-track proposal; and he now sees the Republican "frustration" at the existence of the other, unipartisan reconciliation track as a "gambit". They (in particular Graham and Moran from the full G21 and Portman and Romney from both groups) hadn't been "blindsided" at all, in spite of their complaints; they were fully informed, as Reuters said.

(It may be that they felt Biden was blindsiding them by rubbing their faces in it right there during the announcement, or in other words that they thought they were going to get to spend some time bragging about their victory and pretending the reconciliation track didn't exist before it was formally introduced. It's understandable they should feel "frustrated" by Biden's restatement of his commitment to the full program, preventing them from doing it effectively; that's presumably why Biden did it. Sorry, boys, he's just more skilled than you.)

What Rosen is now questioning isn't the Republicans, but the press—specifically the AP, which "bought" the Republicans' deception (in my opinion, he should also be wondering why WaPo and NYT failed or refused to mention the 21 altogether, but he doesn't seem to be ready for that). This is the good Rosen coming back to the surface, and he's absolutely right: AP did a bad job with this.

I might as well add that I still revere Jay Rosen for his work in helping us to understand the press critically, especially in that one great blogpost introducing the techniques through which they fail. It's because of him that I was able to see where he went wrong on this unusual occasion (a bit of the High Broderism, Quest for Innocence, and a helping of He Said, She Said).