Iran says it has closed the Strait of Hormuz — the corridor about a fifth of the world's oil squeezes through — after the US bombed roughly 140 targets across the country. Simple question, then: is it closed? As of this morning, the answer depends entirely on your homepage. * Al Jazeera's answer: yes, closed, done. "Iran attacks five Gulf nations, shuts Hormuz after US bombing." Shuts — flat, factual, notarized. To be fair, Al Jazeera earned some credibility on this story the hard way: when Iranian missiles came down over Doha, the network's own home city, wounding three people including a child with falling shrapnel, its headline named Iran as the attacker. No euphemism, no scare quotes. The Qatari-owned channel called an attack on Qatar an attack. But the strait? The strait got closed in the headline the moment Tehran said so. * NPR's answer: allegedly. "U.S. launches fresh strikes on Iran as Tehran says it has closed Strait of Hormuz." Watch the move — "Tehran says." In NPR's world the strait isn't closed, it's claimed closed, which is a different thing entirely. The waterway is real; the closure is a press release. * Fox News' answer: open, per the management. "US says Strait of Hormuz remains open as Iran declares it closed." That's two governments disagreeing in a trench coat, wearing a headline. And check the seating order: Washington's version rides up front, Tehran's gets the trailer. * Nobody here is lying. Three newsrooms looked at the same water and made three different calls about whose press office gets to narrate reality: Al Jazeera notarized Tehran's announcement, NPR filed it as a claim, Fox filed the rebuttal first. * Which would all be a fun grammar seminar, except tanker crews, insurers and oil traders have to act on one of these three sentences. Somewhere in the Gulf this morning, a captain is deciding whether to sail based on which verb his newsroom of choice picked.