As a former employee of the newsroom at PBN (I was in Research, Malia was a news reporter/writer) I remember when the whole story about Ben Cayetano and how she ginned up a story about the 1998 election and questions of the election. At the time it felt like it was a he-said, she-said piece that really started to veer her away from the core reporting  that PBN was supposed to be doing - business focused and not political focused. 
Over the years, since her departure, I had noted that some of the stories she did were done with what I call a lot of "protomatter" to fill in the gaps and provide mental crosswalks for the reader to show that things are linked. Problem is that, unless your doing a straight forward story with the 4 W's and 1 H filled in, the reader is at the behest of the writer, and noting the character of the writer, predisposed to be influenced on a point of view that may not be correct. 
Obviously Zimmerman has a lower bar of tolerance when it comes to firming up the link