On Tuesday, CNN reported — via two US officials — that the US military escorted "40 commercial vessels carrying 18 million barrels of oil" through the Strait of Hormuz, a "wartime high." Its headline read like a scoreboard: "60 targets struck, 18M barrels of oil protected: The US military's record day in the Strait of Hormuz." Trump has been saying the Navy walks "around 30 ships" through every night and has "total control" of the strait. Treasury Secretary Bessent said "at least 10 million barrels" a day. Everyone had a number. Al Jazeera did the thing nobody else on our list did: it took the numbers to the people who count ships for a living. * The headline: "How much oil is going through Hormuz? Why data doesn't match US claims." And it really doesn't. Kpler, the commodity trackers, logged six vessels Wednesday, 11 Tuesday, five Monday — a ten-day average of 13 a day. Lloyd's List Intelligence: about 12 transits a day over the past week. The Joint Maritime Information Center, the industry's own watchtower for the region: traffic "far below baseline," risk level "severe." Before the war it was roughly 100 ships and 20 million barrels a day. So Tuesday's "record day" was either 40 ships or 11, depending on whether you asked the Pentagon or a spreadsheet. * Here's why this is a praise piece and not a gotcha: the spreadsheets might be wrong, and Al Jazeera says so. In its own copy. Lloyd's admits a lag in spotting "dark transits" — ships that switch off their transponders. And CNN's official said "most if not all" of Tuesday's 40 did exactly that, to dodge Iranian drones. A ship that goes dark doesn't show up in Kpler's count. So the gap between 40 and 11 might be mostly invisible ships — and AJ printed the paragraph that could sink its own headline. That is rarer than it should be. * It kept going. Maybe the US is counting tugs, dhows and naval auxiliaries that Lloyd's leaves out below 10,000 tonnes. The US has satellites and convoy manifests, not just transponder pings. And then the line that should be stapled to every Hormuz story this year: "Both the US and Iran have an incentive to play up their influence in the strait." A former US ambassador, on the record, suggesting both governments talk less. Honest, boring, correct. * Compare CNN. To its credit, it didn't run a press release either: the story notes the administration faces "heavy skepticism from industry officials" and quotes one saying it "has not covered itself with credibility." But that's paragraph-nine material under a headline built entirely from the officials' scoreboard — 60 targets, 18 million barrels, "record day." The skepticism is in the story. The number is in the font size. * Now the part AJ left out, because we promised we'd always say it. Al Jazeera is funded by the Qatari state, and Qatar has spent weeks mediating between Washington and Tehran — last week we wrote about AJ covering its own owner's diplomatic trip and finding "international hopes" nobody had voiced. A story that says "the US is overstating its grip on the strait" lands somewhere Doha doesn't mind. AJ's line about "both the US and Iran" having incentives is true. There's a third party with incentives, and it signs the paychecks. * Still. When a president says 30, a secretary says 10 million and two anonymous officials say 40, the job is to find the people who count for a living, print what they counted, and then print every reason they might be wrong. Al Jazeera did the whole job. The caveats are what make it journalism instead of the other side's press release. Everyone else ran the scoreboard.