On Monday somebody put holes in the runway of Sanaa's airport. Who? Depends entirely on which whitelisted masthead you opened. NBC News: “Saudi airstrikes hit Sanaa International Airport, Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen say.” AP: “Iran-backed Houthis accuse Saudi Arabia of striking Yemen's international airport.” Al Jazeera: “Yemeni government forces strike Sanaa airport.” * Same crater. Three headlines. Three different fingers on the trigger — Saudi jets with a hedge, Saudi jets as an accusation, and at Al Jazeera, a different actor altogether, no hedge required. * One sentence of background: the strikes hit as a Houthi delegation flew home from Ayatollah Khamenei's funeral in Iran; Yemen's internationally recognized government said the runway was hit to stop that plane landing, while the Houthis blamed Saudi Arabia and promised the “aggression will not go unanswered.” * To be fair: who actually fired is genuinely contested, and “say” and “accuse” are the honest tools for contested facts. But notice the pattern in whose direction the hedges point. When the Houthis hit back at Saudi Arabia's Abha airport hours later, The Washington Post needed no attribution training wheels: “Yemen's Houthis strike Saudi Arabia's Abha airport with missiles and drones in a sharp escalation.” Active verb, no “say,” bonus adjective. Saudi strikes arrive as claims; Houthi strikes arrive as weather. * And Al Jazeera pulled off something almost elegant: it headlined both ends of a Saudi-Houthi exchange without Saudi Arabia appearing as the actor in either one. Sanaa was struck by “Yemeni government forces.” Abha was “targeted” — passive voice — and even that came filed under “Houthis:”, the headline equivalent of holding the claim with kitchen tongs. * Al Jazeera is funded by the government of Qatar, which has spent the last few years carefully patching things up with Riyadh. We're not claiming anyone phoned the newsroom. We're noting that when the bomber's identity is up for grabs, the version you're handed correlates suspiciously well with who signs the outlet's paychecks — which is precisely why the masthead is the first fact of any story, not the last. * Somewhere under all these headlines there's a runway with actual holes in it. Good luck finding out from your feed who made them.