[fridek]

It's incredibly hard to deliver bad news with the right tone. The objective is to deliver precise, true information, and have people go and think (not guess) what's the impact on them.

Conversly, it's really easy to sound as if you don't care enough, or be openly frustrated and deflecting responsibility to someone else (especially if that's justified). This way you end up with people angry at individuals, and not thinking about the next steps (whether getting their own career in order, or continuing the project in a different setup).

Lying, or being wishy-washy is the path of least resistance. I think managers are getting paid to do uncomfortable things and with time might become awesome even in these hard situations, but YRMV.