re: missed story
We see that kind of non-reporting all the time. When did you first see an "Americans almost shot at" story?
I still say, if you want press coverage, you lead with your strong line. The individual who wrote the original military press release didn't do that.
Seymour Hersh's hallucinated nuclear attack on Iran would get a lot less play had the Bush administration not hallucinated a wide assortment of WMD as their bait to get support for an invasion of Iraq. One hallucination begets others.