Israel's military finished reviewing 150 incidents of troop conduct in Gaza and announced five decisions: criminal investigations opened into the killing of five-year-old Hind Rajab and of 15 paramedics — and criminal action declined in three other attacks, which killed aid workers from World Central Kitchen and Doctors Without Borders. Two doors opened, three doors closed, one press release. What happened next in the world's headlines was a controlled experiment in whose deaths make the top line. * The wire that carried the announcement everywhere was AP's: "Israeli military launches criminal probes into killings of Hind Rajab and Palestinian paramedics." The openings got the headline verb; the closures got paragraph two — "the military said it would not probe three other attacks." Credit where due: paragraph two is high, and AP's copy carries José Andrés calling the WCK decision "wrong and painful." But most readers are headline readers, and this headline only had room for the half of the memo where Israel does something. Yesterday we wrote about AP hearing a "launch" in this exact story. The sequel took less than twenty-four hours: launches, it turns out, ship with un-launches, and only one of them gets the rocket coverage. * The closures did eventually reach a headline — the moment a Western government got angry about one of them. Bloomberg, Thursday: "Australia 'Outraged' at Israel Ending Probe of Aid Worker Death." Read the last two words again. Death, singular. Seven people died in that convoy in April 2024. The headline's grammar has room for exactly one of them, and it's the one with an Australian passport — Zomi Frankcom, whose foreign minister supplied the quote. France 24 filed the story under the same peg: "Australia 'outraged' over Israel decision to close probe." In both framings the news isn't that accountability ended; it's that Canberra has feelings about it. The probe's cancellation needed an angry foreign ministry as a plus-one to get into the papers. * Now take one more step down the ladder. The same announcement declined criminal action over four Doctors Without Borders staffers killed in two separate strikes in late 2023 and early 2024. Go looking for a standalone mainstream headline about that decision. We did. There isn't one — the fact lives inside the wire copy and in MSF's own press statement, nowhere else. The Hind Rajab case had a name the world knows. The WCK dead had embassies. MSF's dead had neither, and their case closed in silence. One decision memo, three altitudes of coverage, sorted by the victims' passports — a sentence we last wrote about Ebola statistics, and apparently need to keep in the drawer. * One detail with real teeth appeared almost nowhere except Penny Wong's official statement: Australia learned of Israel's decision "moments before it was announced" — and the announcement came on World Humanitarian Day. The military cleared itself over the killing of aid workers on the day the calendar honors aid workers. A scheduling choice like that is a message, and the press corps that quotes anonymous officials on softer things mostly let a government press release do the noticing. * Probes are verbs with two ends. Wednesday's headlines gave you the launch: Israel investigates itself, accountability in motion. Thursday's gave you a diplomatic spat: Australia upset. At no point did any major outlet's headline say the simplest true thing in the memo — of five cases, three were closed. We'll be watching where the two open ones land. On current evidence, if they're quietly closed next year, the biggest headline will belong to whichever government complains in English.