The FCC voted 2-1 on Thursday to scrap the rule stopping any one company from owning TV stations that reach more than 39% of American households. That is the event, and you can get it anywhere. The part worth your time is that almost every newsroom reporting it works for somebody who owns TV stations. * NBC News went with: "Federal Communications Commission scraps limit on broadcast TV ownership." Subhead: "The move sets the stage for more corporate consolidation in the media industry." Accurate, clean, and written in the voice of a neutral bystander watching an industry it has no stake in. NBC News is owned by NBCUniversal, which is owned by Comcast, which owns a pile of local broadcast stations governed by that exact percentage. Search the page for "Comcast": nothing. "Parent company": nothing. The only place NBCUniversal turns up is the copyright line at the very bottom, next to the sitemap. * Be clear about what is and is not wrong here. The reporting is solid. It carries Commissioner Anna Gomez's best line — "eliminating the cap does not free local broadcasters from economic pressure, it just changes who is doing the squeezing" — and gives Free Press's lawsuit threat real room. Nothing is softened. What is missing is one sentence: the one where a newsroom mentions it has a horse in this race. That sentence is free. Outlets write it automatically when the company in the story is a rival. * CNN's version of the same vote: "FCC repeals national TV ownership cap, a win for Trump-aligned broadcasters." That headline does the thing NBC's doesn't — it names who won. Not "the industry," not "consolidation." Trump-aligned broadcasters, up top, where people actually read. The piece then sets Carr's promise to "restore balance to the broadcast airwaves" directly against Free Press's read of it: his goal is "to spur more media consolidation involving companies Donald Trump views as ideological allies and corporate cronies." * Which is more entertaining than CNN probably intended, because the same newsroom published this on the same day: "Britain clears $110 billion Paramount-Warner Bros. merger." That is the deal that sells CNN. So CNN spent Thursday writing the sharpest copy available about media consolidation while a regulator on another continent waved through its own. We flagged the first instalment of this months ago, when CNN covered its own for-sale sign. The newsroom keeps filing on its own auction with a straight face, and it remains one of the strangest sights in American media. * There is also a Nexstar complaint travelling in two outfits. In NBC's story, the station giant grumbles that "no one would suggest limiting the reach of YouTube, Amazon, or CNN." In CNN's story, Nexstar makes the same argument with a different guest list: "Google's YouTube, Meta's Instagram, or Netflix." Two statements, two days, one company — and the version that names CNN is not the one that ran on CNN. Nobody covered anything up. It is just funny. * Fox belongs in this story too, because Fox Corporation is one of the biggest station owners in the country. In Fox News Digital's media section — the shelf where it files stories about the television business — there was no piece on the vote as of Thursday evening. The most recent items sitting there: Detroit voters, a Fetterman-versus-Jon-Stewart argument, and a run of sports-radio clips. * None of this needs a conspiracy. It needs one habit: when a business story is about your own business, write it straight and then say the quiet part out loud. NBC's audience read a story about who is allowed to own the public airwaves without ever being told that the people telling them own a chunk of it.