After calls were made to me and papers I write for, she was assured I was not. But I don't write for The Australian, which on Monday ran Milne's column. Gillard, I'm told, went "ballistic" and "nuclear". She made "multiple" calls to Hartigan and also to The A ustralian's editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell, demanding an immediate retraction. Normally, someone aggrieved would not be able to call the CEO of a newspaper and normally a newspaper would, on being alerted to an error, correct or remove only those parts of its report that were false or defamatory. In this case, The Australian removed the whole column, on Gillard's insistence. I think this was an overreaction. It was also an overreaction to remove my own blog postings, and to request that I not write anything further on this matter until further discussion. You may blame News Limited for being weak, but never has it felt so politically vulnerable. Gillard had for weeks exploited Britain's News of the World phone hacking scandal to threaten News Limited with inquiries that might force it to sell some of its papers or address what the Greens called its "bias". Like the News of the World, News Limited is part of the Rupert Murdoch empire, and Prime Minister Gillard, long seething at the critical coverage of her performance by The Australian and The Daily Telegraph, now claimed the Australian papers also had "serious questions to answer". I have not the slightest doubt that Gillard's suggestions of an inquiry greatly worried News Limited, and influenced its overreaction to the Prime Minister's fury these past days. Whether Gillard specifically mentioned the threat of an inquiry in her "multiple" calls to News Limited executives I do not know. But I do know that she should have been aware of its potential impact. This, then, is how news can be kept from the public. Not being able to report on what I consider improper pressure by a desperate Prime Minister to kill a story meant I could not report fairly on the political scene as I saw it. I could not do my job, and I consulted friends about resigning. I am now told that News Limited was just being cautious while it checked its legal position. Hartigan told me: "At no stage is my job to stop stories getting into papers." No, it was the Australian Prime Minister who, in my opinion, tried to do that. Again, I asked her about attempts she'd made to shut down debate over the past few days and whether she'd discussed in her calls to Chris Mitchell an inquiry into the media. She replied: "The Australian and News Limited chose to retract the article and make an unreserved apology. Given you are an employee of News Limited, I'd suggest questions about their decisions are best directed internally. "In relation to your other questions, these are matters that have been dealt with on the public record over a period of 15 years." You may even think it's mean to suggest Gillard showed poor judgment in working for and having a relationship with a union boss who turned out to be a conman. And on all these points, you may be right. But now even this debate is no longer the most serious issue. You see, Gillard could have simply pointed out the errors and ridiculed the accusers as muckrakers. Instead, it appears as if she pulled strings and, with threats of inquiries and forced sales left hanging in the air, sought to shut down a debate. I thank News Limited for defying the Prime Minister and letting me write as I have above. I apologise for doubting its commitment to free speech. But be aware how endangered is our freedom to speak as we find, especially of this Prime Minister.

Originally published as Column - How Gillard tried to kill a story