Discussing John Key

Censorship by the Listener?

Seemorerocks

On Thursday I heard an interview discussing the day's events with John Key suddenly backtracking on his confident assertion that he had not been in touch with right-wing blogger, Cameron Slater with Otago academic Bryce Edwards and right-wing commentator, Matthew Hooten.

Bryce Edwards raised the possibility that Key has been "leveraged" by Slater who has dirt on Key and National and has threatened to go "nuclear".

This was disavowed by Hooten who said there was more at stake than this.

The hairs on my head stood up when I heard the following (at 5'38" in the tape below):

Matthew Hooten: 'Jane Clifton has written in the Listener out today “It is not histrionics to say that John Key has brought us to the top of an abyss, at the bottom of which lies the Stasi” '

When I heard this I wandered down to my local dairy to buy the latest Listener (dated 29 November - 5 December, 2014).

To my surprise, there was no article about John Key with this quote by Jane Clifton.

Instead, there was an article on Andrew Little entitled "the Little Engine that could" (behind a pay wall).

What is one to conclude?

The one possibility is that Hooten who was reading a quote was wrong about the date of the article (that it might come out next week)

Or, the second possibility is that the article was pulled at the last minute by the editor.

Given the way that the Clifton quote gets to the centre of a politically-inconvenient truth,  I lean to the latter explantion.