You could find those words downstairs, in the article, if you went looking.
The headline read: “Iran attacks American warships and base after U.S. sinks five Iranian tankers”.
The body read: “Two American warships were attacked and damaged by ballistic missiles, the IRGC said in a statement, according to the semi-official Fars news agency.”
NBC knew whose account it was. Its writer told you. Its headline gave you the attack without telling you who claimed it.
Four words. You could fit them on a sugar packet. We have managed to print less useful things on sugar packets.
There is a limit to this complaint. “Attacks” does not mean “hits.” Someone can launch a missile, miss, and still have attacked a ship. NBC’s headline did not announce confirmed damage. Accusing it of that would require doing some careless editing of our own.
The problem comes before the damage assessment. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard claimed the later attacks on American warships. NBC presented that account as an event in its headline, then identified the claimant in the body. A reader who saw only the headline got more certainty than the article supplied.
Time reported CENTCOM’s denial, quoting its statement that “no U.S. Navy warship has been struck.” That gives us a military denial to go with the military claim. Neither government gets to certify its own account because the other government is objectionable.
The evidence available here does not settle whether the two named destroyers suffered hits or damage. I would prefer to know. So would anyone with someone aboard. Preference does not produce a damage report.
The base in Jordan offers no shortcut. Jordanian authorities reported a missile barrage and intercepts. Their account cannot tell us what happened to the warships. Put the base and the ships in one sentence and the reader may carry confidence about one across to the other. The sentence is convenient. The geography remains a nuisance.
We also do not know when NBC updated its article relative to the reported denial. There is no basis here for saying an editor saw the denial and chose to hide it. The published headline and body give us enough to criticize without furnishing an imaginary meeting.
A war headline reaches you while you are doing something else. Buying groceries, perhaps. You should not have to stop in the aisle and investigate which part the newspaper knows and which part a military spokesman says.
NBC could have told you that Iran claimed the warship attacks. It had the words in the article. They would have been useful at the top.