Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Qatar's Father Emir, died Sunday morning at 74; funeral prayers were held in Doha the same evening. Every newsroom on earth filed an obituary. One of those newsrooms exists because he signed a decree in 1996. Let's read that one closely. * Al Jazeera's obituary: "Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the architect of modern Qatar." Inside, the network he created gets a proud cameo — "the launch of the Al Jazeera news channel in 1996" — written in the third person, like a museum caption. No "that's us." No disclosure line. The house wrote the obituary of the man who built the house and listed itself among his renovations. * Now the verb. Al Jazeera's account of how his reign began: he "assumed power as emir on June 27, 1995." Assumed — the way you assume a chair someone left empty. What actually happened, per the rest of the world's obituary desks: he deposed his own father in a bloodless palace coup while the old man was out of the country. * Compare the wire headline that ran on NBC News, among others: "Former Qatar ruler Sheikh Hamad, a modernizer who seized power, has died." Seized — right there in the headline. Same man, same June morning in 1995, one verb of distance. "Assumed" is doing very quiet, very loyal work. * The 2013 half of the story, Al Jazeera tells straight — and generously. His handover to his son was a "peaceful, voluntary transfer of leadership," one that was "rare in the region." Which is true! It genuinely was rare. It's just easier to celebrate how gracefully a man left the stage once you've repainted the door he came in through. * About the man himself, the record is genuinely enormous — gas wealth turned into global clout, votes for women, a World Cup, and a satellite channel that drove every other government in the region up the wall. There are real reasons the obituaries are long today, and a funeral is no venue for a prosecution. * But there's a difference between softening a life and rewriting its first chapter. Every desk sands a corner on the day of a death; only one desk had its founding document signed by the deceased. When that's the hand holding the pen, "architect of modern Qatar" isn't a headline. It's a thank-you card.