Does context matter?

Helmut Sonnenfeldt and Ron Nessen of the liberal Brookings institution chime in on the Rumsfeld "town hall" meeting with the troops. After noting the tactic used to get the armor question before Rumsfeld, they note:

press coverage — particularly on television — provided a misleadingly truncated version of Mr. Rumsfeld's full answer to the Pitts/Wilson question during a "Town Hall Meeting" in Kuwait as the soldier's unit was about to ship out to Iraq. <snip> Mr. Rumsfeld's response has been repeatedly characterized as an insensitive, brusque, disrespectful, insulting putdown. And that description might be fitting if that was all the secretary said in response to the Pitts/Wilson question.

The entire statement is given in the piece linked. RTWT.

There are any number of people who completely excuse the reporter's tactics because of the seriousness of the issue raised. But just how bad is the situation?

But the worst shortcoming of media coverage of this controversy was failure to report virtually all the unit's combat vehicles had already been up-armored by the Army and the rest were completed the day after Mr. Rumsfeld's Town Meeting comments to the troops in Kuwait. <snip> The general responded, "[A]t this point the vehicles that they're operating, that they're driving, are all up-armored." Did you see that quote on TV? Hear it on the radio? Read it in most newspapers? Me neither.

The press has been solidly against war in Iraq since the issue first came up. It seems they're very reluctant to report anything that might show it in a good light. After all, they might wind up having to re-think.