Good public relations (PR) is not intuitive. The best practice when it comes to bad news is Robert Dilenschneider's advice to "tell it all and tell it fast", but companies are often hesitant to do so for legal and political reasons.

EDIT: To elaborate, getting ahead of an unfolding story is difficult even for experienced PR people. One misplaced word may be taken out of context or even used as admission of guilt in an ongoing investigation. This is generally why PR folks default to true generalities, e.g. "we care about our customers' safety" or "what happened is terrible and should be prevented from happening again".

My knowledge of PR is limited to the book "When the Headline Is You" which I highly recommend. It gives a great perspective on how companies manage themselves in the public light.