I can certainly understand your frustration Blacksheep. Keep in mind though honey that journo's don't have your knowledge/understanding and their main objective is to create copy that sells. Management (and those who're vying for position in upper management) immediately respond by making a big (read: conspicuous) issue of covering their behinds and "taking the matter very seriously".
As for the issue of any emergency A.D.; I'm reluctant to dismiss that offhandedly myself, given that it's the grandaddy of all airworthiness directives. I won't even comment on it until I've read it (you wouldn't happen to have the AD ref.# handy would you?). But, I tend to believe that they wouldn't issue it if they weren't genuinely concerned based on coroborating data (maybe through M&D's or service difficulty programs?).
Nevertheless, I wouldn't take it too personally--there are an awful lot of agendas involved in a situation like this.