This morning we covered how four desks introduced you to Colombia's new president. Here's the sequel: how three desks introduced his check. On Friday the US State Department announced it plans a $1 billion security package for Abelardo de la Espriella's brand-new administration — the same man who declared in his inauguration speech that "the option of dialogue is completely exhausted." A press release went out. Three newsrooms translated it. Grade the translations with us. * Reuters: "US says it plans $1 billion security assistance to government of Colombia's new leader." Honestly? Full marks. "US says" — attribution preserved, so the plan belongs to the people planning it. "Security assistance" — the government's own category, uncontested. The dollar figure, in the headline, where readers can see it. This is what a wire headline is for. * The New York Times: "Trump Administration Fast-Tracks Military Partnership With Colombia to Target Drug Traffickers." Watch the purpose clause. "To target drug traffickers" is what the State Department SAYS the money is for — it's the mission statement from the press release, promoted to the headline as settled fact. There's a difference between "the US is sending weapons, which it says will fight cartels" and "the US is sending weapons to fight cartels." The first is reporting. The second is stenography with better fonts. Also gone: the number. A billion dollars vanished from the headline and got replaced with "Fast-Tracks," a verb that mostly communicates enthusiasm. * And Euronews: "US intends to send $1 billion in aid to Colombia following de la Espriella's inauguration." Aid. AID. "Aid" is the word for mosquito nets, school lunches and flood relief. Euronews's own second sentence calls it a "security package" — the correction arrives eleven words too late, after the headline already filed a billion dollars of military assistance under the same category as vaccine shipments. Somewhere in Lyon an editor typed "aid" and a Black Hawk turned into a food parcel. * What none of the three headlines told you, and the bodies barely did: Colombia simultaneously joined something called the "Shield of the Americas" — a Trump-built alliance of governments that has, in the State Department's words, vowed to defeat "vicious narcoterrorist and criminal organizations." An entire new hemispheric military alliance got announced on a Friday and made it into precisely zero of these headlines — in Euronews's piece it sits in a single mid-story paragraph, like a software update you agree to without reading. Also unavailable: any detail on how the billion actually gets spent. Reuters noted the allocation wasn't disclosed. Nobody else seemed to miss it. * Euronews did quote Trump calling de la Espriella a "smart, strong, and tough leader" who'll be "tremendously successful" — verbatim, uncontested, no critic within a hundred kilometres of the paragraph. So the money is "aid," the purpose is whatever the donor's press office says it is, and the recipient comes pre-endorsed. That's not three newsrooms checking power. That's one press release wearing three different mastheads.