In the press "declined to comment" doesn't mean that the person responded "no comment", as far as I can tell. It means the person did not respond.
I've seen a few cases of press folks sending an email with a question and then going to press an hour later claiming that the addressee of the email (who happened to be 12 timezones away and asleep, as it happened) "declined to comment".
Reuters should be especially careful about how they word things, given the size of their readership and the authority people invest in their reporting.
