Anyways, here's a detailed response about the issue from the CEO:
http://www.quora.com/Is-Reddit-closing-their-NYC-and-Salt-La...
Don't forget that when any hot story hits the tech press, every outlet puts out one or more articles about it. That makes for dozens of posts. Throw in blogs and there are dozens more. If we didn't prune duplicates, copies, and me-toos, that's all the front page would consist of.
Maybe you don't enforce it as hardly as you used to, or maybe this thing I saw was a one off, or maybe that guy at the time had crossed a starker line; regardless, saying that it isn't true is misleading.
Second, I know from experience how distorted people's interpretations of these situations can be. You seem sure that you judged one example correctly; I think it's more likely that you jumped to a conclusion.
The first thing PG said when teaching me how to moderate HN two years ago was: whatever you do, don't censor stories because they're anti-YC. I think about this every day and try to stick to it. But that doesn't mean that posts like the OP get a free pass just because they say bad things about a YC-funded startup. If we applied the rule that mechanically, we would fail our primary responsibility, which is to keep the quality of HN high. So we do what we can to balance the concerns.