One sentence of background, because the rest of this is about packaging: on Saturday, Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said the deal with Oman on a Strait of Hormuz shipping route is "very close" — and in the same breath, that the strait isn't actually reopening until Washington meets Iran's conditions. Deal close; strait shut. One story, two halves. Now watch five newsrooms decide which half you see first. * AP: "Iran Says Deal on Strait of Hormuz Is Close but Is Not Enough to Open the Waterway." Every load-bearing part survived into the headline — who's claiming it (Iran says), the sweetener (close), and the catch (not enough to open). It reads like a contract with the fine print printed at full size. The reader who never clicks — most readers — still walks away knowing the actual state of the world. This is the control group. * Bloomberg: "Iran Says Hormuz Deal Close But That Its Conditions Must Be Met." Look at the first two words and permit us a moment. On Wednesday we caught Bloomberg deleting "Iran Says" from a Hormuz headline — the words survived only in the URL, like a receipt nobody shredded. Saturday: attribution's back on the front of the sentence where readers can see it. We're not claiming credit. We're just noting, warmly, that the two words found their way home. The body does the markets-desk math underneath: any respite for energy supplies "may be limited." * Al Jazeera: "Iran deliberates Hormuz arrangement amid uncertain prospects with US." No deal, no close, no open, no shut — an "arrangement" being "deliberated" amid "uncertain prospects." That's fog thick enough to land a plane in, and it's not an accident: Qatar's network covering Gulf diplomacy writes headlines the way diplomats shake hands. The irony is that AJ's body carries the hardest line of anyone — an IRGC spokesperson saying the strait's reopening "has its own specific mechanism," separate from Oman entirely. Softest headline in the sample, wrapped around the toughest quote. * NPR: "Iran says agreement with Oman for Strait of Hormuz prohibits U.S. and Israeli vessels." NPR skipped the mood ring entirely and headlined what's allegedly in the thing: a ban on American and Israeli ships, with fines up to 20% of cargo value for violators. Two days ago we praised NPR for wearing "Iran says" in public. Still wearing it. And by headlining the deal's contents instead of its temperature, NPR is the only one telling you why Washington might not be toasting this "progress." * Then there's CNN, whose Saturday coverage filed the story under Iran's demands — but whose own Friday-night scoop is the piece of journalism doing the real work here: "Trump's top general is 'looking for an off-ramp' from Iran war as US military options remain limited, sources say." Three sources tell CNN that Gen. Dan Caine has privately told cabinet colleagues that airpower alone won't get there, and that the exit everyone's looking for starts — CNN's words — "with an agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz." Now read the weekend's headlines again with that in your pocket. Iran says the strait won't open until its conditions are met. The US president's own top general reportedly needs the strait deal as the way out. No headline in America printed the word "leverage." You can find it anyway, sitting quietly between those two sentences. * And while five newsrooms were choosing fonts for "close": a missile hit an ADNOC tanker in the very strait under negotiation that same morning — we covered yesterday how the headline on that one ended in "no casualties" while the body kept a ledger. That's the weekend in full. When every fact in a story is "Iran says," a headline's only real choice is which of Iran's sentences to promote. AP promoted both halves. Al Jazeera promoted neither. And the difference between those two isn't style — it's whether you knew, at the door, that nothing is opening.