Gloria Steinem died at home in New York on Wednesday, aged 92. Her foundation announced it Thursday morning. That's the news. What we're interested in is the noun — because an obituary headline is a newsroom answering, in about four words, the question "who was this person?" And on Thursday, the answers came back very different. * The Washington Post: "lodestar of the modern women's movement." CNN: "feminist icon and founder of Ms. Magazine." NBC: "fierce feminist trailblazer." NPR: "trailblazing journalist and activist." The Guardian, from London: "groundbreaking feminist campaigner." Al Jazeera: "feminist icon." Five newsrooms, five different word-pictures, and all of them roughly the size of the life. Lodestar is a lot. But she did co-found a magazine, a political caucus and a movement's public face, so fine — a big noun for a big career. * Now Fox News: "Gloria Steinem, feminist writer and activist, dead at 92." Not "dies" — "dead." Filed under Politics, not US news. Published at 6:31 a.m. Eastern with a "developing story" label, and as of Thursday afternoon it was still the same four paragraphs: the fact of the death, her foundation's Instagram statement, and a photo caption. The photo? The Women's March in Washington, January 21, 2017 — the day after a certain inauguration. So the only context Fox's readers got for a 60-year career was the one afternoon she spent marching against the man they watch Fox for. * To be fair to Fox: "feminist writer and activist" is accurate, and no, nobody owes a eulogy to someone they disagreed with. But the Politics tag is a choice. NPR's obituary ran long and ran as plain news, where most dead 92-year-old authors go. Fox put her where the fights are. That tells you how Fox understood her — not as a person who died, but as an opponent who stopped. * The most honest obituary of the day, for our money, was NPR's. It has the Playboy Bunny exposé, the illegal abortion at 22 that her memoir was dedicated to, the caucus she helped found and the numbers since (women in Congress: 15 then, 150 now) — and also the awkward bit: her brief involvement, after college, with a CIA-backed group that sent students to Soviet-sponsored youth festivals, a fact that bothered feminists for decades. NPR put it high up, with her defense attached. That's what respect actually looks like in an obituary: the whole person, not the greatest hits. The BBC managed something similar with one clean line — her activism "was not without a backlash." * And then there's the British tabloid route into the story. The Daily Mail did run a straight obituary Thursday morning — "Feminist activist and journalist Gloria Steinem dies aged 92," by a news reporter, all proper. But by afternoon the Steinem story on its news front page was this: "Meghan Markle shares previously unseen photo of Prince Archie with late feminist icon Gloria Steinem as she pays tribute to her 'friend and mentor.'" Filed under Royals, by the associate lifestyle editor. * The Mirror went further: on its news feed Thursday evening, the only Gloria Steinem story we could find was "Meghan Markle pays tribute to her 'friend and mentor' Gloria Steinem with emotional post." Also Royals. A woman who spent six decades arguing that women shouldn't be defined by the famous people near them got, on two of Britain's biggest news sites, defined by the famous person near her. She'd have had a line for that. It would have been shorter than ours. * None of this is a scandal. It's a map. The Post and CNN reached for the biggest noun on the shelf. NPR reached for the whole shelf, dust included. Fox reached for the smallest word that was still true and filed her with the enemies. The tabloids reached for a duchess. Same death, same Instagram statement, same 92 years — and each outlet told you exactly who it thinks you are by telling you who she was.