It's called "critical juncture theory."
The idea is that moments occur- Pearl Harbor, dropping the atomic bomb, 9/11, etc.- where history occurs in real time, but "story behind the story" [reality] can't be deduced from shocking immediate visible events - only retrospectively.
There's really no precedent in journalism for what's occurring.
Journalists don't know how to handle this.
History isn't much of a guide.
Even if this chaos is by design, the shock to normal functioning of government is novel.
Journalists don't know what they don't know.