The short version: a photo from a Green Party event — a man in a black t-shirt printed with a guillotine and the words "we're only making plans for Nigel" — appeared on Green leader Zack Polanski's Instagram, Reform UK reported it to the Met for "inciting murder", and Nigel Farage says Polanski should be arrested. * Let's be clear about the stakes first, because they're real. Former Tory MP Ann Widdecombe was murdered in her home weeks ago; prosecutors described a planned, targeted hammer attack in court just last week. A guillotine aimed at a named politician, in this exact moment, is not a story anyone should be breezy about — and even the Greens aren't: their own spokesperson called the shirt "clearly in poor taste" and said Polanski condemns it. * Which is why the one word every headline chose matters so much. The Guardian: "Police make inquiries after Farage reports Polanski post for 'inciting murder'." The standfirst goes further: the "Green party leader shared picture". Polanski post. Leader shared. Ownership, asserted, twice, before the article even starts. * Then the Guardian's own body copy — to its credit, only three paragraphs in — complicates exactly that: per the Greens, Polanski "accepted being tagged in a post with 20 images without realising there was more to it than he had seen." An Instagram collaborator tag is basically being handed a stack of twenty photos and vouching for the two on top. You can think that was careless — a party leader with 713,000 followers probably should check all twenty — and still notice it's a different act than posting a guillotine. * The BBC's headline: "Reform UK reports Zack Polanski to police over guillotine t-shirt post." Better subject — Reform is the one acting in that sentence — but the same possessive physics: "post" sits right next to Polanski's name, wearing his coat, answering his mail. * Here's the thing. Farage's exact claim was: "This is what Zack Polanski has just posted on his Instagram." Posted. His. That framing is the very thing in dispute — and when a headline compresses "accepted a collaborator tag on someone else's carousel" into "Polanski post", it has quietly adopted the accuser's grammar before the Met has finished making inquiries. * The police get to decide whether the image was incitement. That's their question. The authorship question, though, got decided yesterday, by headline writers, unanimously, in favor of the version that fits in one line. Readers who never scroll past it — most of them — now know one thing about this story, and it's the disputed thing.