"We wouldn't have had to go through all this if we had done our job right in the first place. The media should have pressed harder for documentation and should not have allowed sources to remain anonymous. It's just amazing what we let people get away with saying" (Geneva Overholser, journalism professor at the University of Missouri).

"The problem is that follow-ups as a rule are treated like stepchildren. You go with the big story when you got it, and if it's contradicted later, you try to ignore the contradiction." (Marvin Kalb, executive director of the Washington office of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy). 

"Probably most papers are wishing they had paid a little bit more attention" (USA Today White House Editor Gwen Flanders).

What are these giants of journalism talking about?  Dick Cheney's energy policy?  The run up to the invasion of Iraq?  The Justice Department's purge of US Attorneys?

None of the above.  These are all quotes from an archival piece in the July/August 2001 issue of the American Journalism Review about the reporting of "Vandalgate."  We remember Vandalgate as the reports of outgoing Clinton administration's White House vandalism, planted by Ari Fleischer in the days following George W. Bush's first inauguration, and when the dynamics of the Bush White House-news industry relationship were established once and for all.  Unfortunately, about all that has apparently changed since then are the stakes.