Corporate statements during litigation have a recognizable vocabulary: "isolated incident," "committed to safety," "we take this seriously." None of it is technically false. All of it is designed to sound like an answer without actually addressing what happened.
The response isn't to match the spin with spin of your own — it's to fact-check it, specifically and immediately, against the public record. "Isolated incident" gets answered with the prior complaint filed two years earlier. "Committed to safety" gets answered with the internal memo already in the record showing the company knew and didn't act. The correction has to be faster than the spin's shelf life, or the vague statement is what a reporter's story runs with by default.
A defendant's statement made during an active trial shapes same-day coverage whether or not it's accurate, because reporters on deadline often can't independently verify it before filing. Real-time fact-checking — coordinated with trial counsel on what's appropriate to say publicly during an active proceeding — is what keeps a vague, defensible-sounding statement from becoming the day's uncontested headline.