I see what you mean about the news media, I suspect this is due in part to all of the unknowns which still exist.
Doesn't usually stop them speculating, or even trying to manufacture stories out of thin air. I suspect the problem is they can't cover it because they haven't got 150 reporters with satellite video phones in the disaster area.
As for the nature of the object, if the subsidiary scars are shown to be genuine, I think this adds weight to the asteroid theory. An incoming comet would be in one piece, we rarely see "multiple comets", and Jupiter's gravity wouldn't have had time to rip up a directly incoming object enough to make sufficient difference to the impact point. SL9 was only in widely seperated pieces because of its previous close encounter with Jupiter, when it was perturbed into its impacting trajectory. Anyhow I guess we'll never know, unless pre-impact images of the object do come to light, and maybe not even then. Finally the distinction between comets and some types of asteroid is rather wooly anyway!
