When is a quote not a quote?

Headline in my local paper the other day - Diana's tribute "disaster". This of course refers to the Public Accounts Committee's report on the Royal Parks and the Princess Diana fountain. So what would you understand by that headline? I imagine you would assume that the Committee had said that the fountain had been a disaster. And yet the word "disaster" appears nowhere in their report. They're pretty scathing about it, but that word is not used. So why did the paper put it in quotes? If they hadn't, it would simply have been a reasonable assessment by the paper of the overall tenor of the report, but by putting it in quotes they are representing that that is specifically what the report said. And I'm not just getting at my local paper - there is a tendency throughout the press to attribute apparent quotes to people who, when you examine the reality, never said any such thing. I think it was Thomas Jefferson who said something about the only truth in newspapers being in the adverts!