The Washington Post's headline: "Trump says he asked FIFA head to review red card but 'didn't tell him what to do.'" * Read that structure. It's not just reporting what Trump did. It's reporting what Trump did, followed immediately by Trump's own explanation for why that's fine. * The denial isn't in paragraph six, where denials usually live. It's load-bearing. It's doing headline duty, right there in the title, before a single fact has been laid out. * Compare that to Fox News's version of the same news: "Trump called FIFA president to review Folarin Balogun's red card ahead of USA-Belgium match, source says." No self-defense clause. Just the action, sourced, done. * Which means the outlet usually cast as tougher on Trump ran the headline with his alibi pre-installed, and the outlet usually cast as friendlier to him ran the flatter, more clinical version. That's backwards enough to make you re-read both twice. * Quoting a denial isn't dishonest -- Trump really did say it, word for word. But a headline only has so many words in it, and the Post spent some of its precious few giving the accused a chance to explain himself before the jury's even seated. * Fox, of all outlets, just told you what happened and got out of the way. * Headlines are real estate. Every word you spend on someone's defense is a word you didn't spend on what they actually did. The Post spent it on the defense.