Journalism is best practiced by journalists, and neither man was a journalist. White House damage-control teams use gumshoes, but respectable magazines do not. On the other hand, the stories that flowed from the Arkansas Project were sound, and many were ahead of the rest of the press. No one seems to have found factual errors or unfounded accusations in the Spectator 's Whitewater coverage. Contrast this, however, with the coverage of the Arkansas Project and its connection to Hale.
Bad things happen when a story enters the left-wing media food chain.
The first story, by Karen Gullo of the Associated Press, appeared on March 5. Parker Dozhier, it said, had allowed Hale free use of a fishing cabin and a car when he visited him at the bait shop. Gullo's story, though, quoted Mann only once, when she said Hale had discussed Starr's Whitewater investigation with Henderson and Boynton. The Democrat-Gazette also pointed out, as had the AP, that Mann had been a 1992 Clinton delegate to the Florida state Democratic convention. Salon published its first piece, by Jonathan Broder, its Washington bureau chief, and Murray Waas, a kind of free- lancer, eleven days later.