One way would be to make sure the article generates good discussion. There are no comments on this article other than complaints that it's on the front page...
What about if people read it, found it thought provoking, but didn't have anything to add, to discuss?
Shooting down a blog article written by somebody from his heart, while upvoting yellow journalism — that's a common phenomenon here on HN — and I should know because this is my 9th year as an HN visitor and contributor.
So such mean comments being upvoted, that doesn't look good, but on the other hand I can't say that I'm surprised. But to answer your particular comment ...
HN actually does a pretty good job at detecting voting rings, along with upvotes triggered by mailing / social list. HN's detection is so aggressive in fact that it has many false positives, making it easy to bury stories you don't like ;-)
And to blog authors out there — please write more, as I'm interested in genuine feelings and opinions, not by PR pieces written by corrupt media outlets.
I don't believe that's true and have reason to doubt it. But if you (or anyone) think you're seeing a case of this, please send a link to hn@ycombinator.com. We'll look into it.