If I remember right, the reporter also was involved in setting up some of the very things that the report was exposing. IOW, it was a hit piece from the get-go. The reporter created the news just like the NBC gas tank on the chevy pick-up......
"It's one of the very few cases where a news organization has been found liable for damages based not on the story but on the way they got the story," said Jane Kirkley, the executive director of the Reporter's Committee for Freedom of the Press.
http://www.cnn.com/US/9701/23/food.lion/
If you think this behaviour constitutes honest reporting, you have a bright future as Dan Rather's intern.