On Wednesday we caught Bloomberg's headline dropping two load-bearing words — "Iran Says" — from a story whose every fact came from Iran saying it. The words survived in the URL, like a receipt. We suggested, gently, that attribution belongs on the outside of the sentence, where readers can see it. * Well. Here's NPR's Hormuz headline: "Iran says deal is close with Oman over Strait of Hormuz." First two words: Iran says. Not buried, not laundered, not quietly deleted between the URL and the page. The claim's owner is named before the claim. This is the journalistic equivalent of showing your work, and we're genuinely pleased to report it still exists in the wild. * Why does it matter so much on this story in particular? Because the entire thing is made of assertions. The strait has been closed since March. The deal is "in the final stage of drafting" — says Iran's deputy foreign minister. Ships would route through Iranian waters and exit through Oman's — says the same man, to Iran's state media. Nothing here is a fact you can stand on yet; it's all forecast, and the forecaster is a party to the negotiation. Strip the "says" and you're not reporting a deal, you're announcing one on Tehran's behalf. * The rest of the field, to be fair, mostly kept their guardrails too — each in their own dialect. Al Jazeera went with "Hormuz deal 'close'" — the scare quotes doing the work, close according to somebody. NBC wrote a small essay in headline form: "Iran and the U.S. say a Strait of Hormuz deal is close, but one or both would have to back down." That's attribution PLUS a skepticism clause — arguably a whole analysis smuggled in before the colon, but at least the smuggled goods are honest ones. * Which leaves Wednesday's Bloomberg headline as the odd one out of its own story: the only major version that presented an Iranian official's optimism with the nametag removed. * Small craft note for the road: attribution isn't hedging, and it isn't cowardice. It's the price sticker on the claim. NPR left the sticker on. When the joint statement actually lands — if it lands — the headlines can finally drop the "says" and say the thing. Until then, the two most informative words available on this story are the ones telling you who's talking.