The numbers first, because they're the whole show: Exxon banked $14.5 billion last quarter — about $160 million a day — and Chevron made $12.1 billion, quadrupling last year, because the US-Iran war sent oil prices up more than 40% and knocked out enough Middle East and Russian refining capacity to make everyone else's refineries print money. One event, four headlines, and Exxon got assigned a completely different job in each of them. * CNN gave it the job of profiteer, and did the division for you: "Exxon made $160 million per day last quarter as oil prices surged." The body goes harder — "Big Oil is minting money," refineries "cashing in on the damage done by war." One quibble: "as oil prices surged" is prices-as-weather. The article knows exactly what surged them; the headline keeps it no-fault, like a crash report that says the car "came to a sudden stop." * Now Reuters' wire headline. Deep breath: "Exxon, Chevron warn of continued high fuel prices from Iran war." Warn. The two companies that just collected a combined $26.5 billion from those exact prices are cast as the concerned neighbors ringing your doorbell about them. That's the guy selling $40 umbrellas outside the stadium gravely advising you that it might keep raining. * The best part is the tell inside Reuters' own building. Same day, Reuters' Breakingviews column: "Chevron and Exxon quietly gush over giant profit." So the opinion desk watched them gush over the money while the news desk typed up their weather forecast. Same companies, same Friday, two job titles — profiteer in the column, forecaster on the wire. * The Washington Post handed out a third role: "As Exxon and Chevron report windfall profits, lawmakers take aim." There's a word — "windfall" — that admits the money fell out of the sky, and a grammar that puts someone accountable in the frame, even if it's Congress doing the aiming rather than anyone explaining the sky. * And Exxon's CEO Darren Woods got his own framing into everybody's story: the quarter was "shaped by disruption, but defined by execution." "Disruption" is one way to describe a shooting war that closed the Strait of Hormuz. If you've been on the paying end of a pump this year, you were part of the execution. * Headline grammar is a payroll department: it hands out job titles. Last quarter Exxon was a profiteer at CNN, a target at the Post, and a helpful forecaster at Reuters — for the same $14.5 billion. Whichever paper you read decided whether anyone owed you an explanation.