They’ll show you the DNA ledger — and still won’t timestamp the missing

France 24 can write accountability-prose. It proved it in one of today’s Nepal flood cards.

In the DNA-identification piece, the reporting is all handles: a police hospital in Kathmandu, collection centres, DNA samples taken from unidentified remains before burial, genetic profiles compared, identification numbers assigned. That is a chain of custody. You can ask who did what, where, and how many. You can catch it being wrong.

Then, same day, same outlet, same disaster: a tunnel-survivor story says the number of missing has risen to 5,624, “according to Nepalese and Chinese authorities,” while about 900 workers remain trapped in tunnels.

And the sentence refuses the one housekeeping clause that would stop readers from doing nonsense arithmetic:

• As of when is 5,624 true?
• Which registry is counting (and are Nepal and China being merged or merely mentioned)?
• What scope (Nepal only, Nepal + Tibet, specific districts, worksites)?
• Are the 900 trapped workers included in 5,624, or additive to it?

“According to authorities” is not a source you can query; it’s a source-class that keeps the number large and untouchable.

The point isn’t inconsistency. It’s selectivity. France 24 spends precision where it buys institutional virtue and credibility (look: DNA, procedure, care), and withholds precision where it would make the missing count checkable and therefore contestable.

The DNA card is falsifiable on contact. The 5,624 line is constructed to be immune from being wrong — not because the world is unknowable, but because the sentence declines to supply handles.

One card doesn’t prove France 24 has “changed.” But it does prove this: the outlet has the language for ledgers, and it can choose where to use it.