On Wednesday, I interviewed Bernard Goldberg, the author of 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken Is #37), for an upcoming article. He was fuming about being ambushed during his appearance on cable's Donny Deutsch Show, and I didn't want to tell Bernie that I wasn't sure if I had heard of the show, for fear of sounding like I'm not in the know. On the other hand, nobody else has heard of the show either!

Bill O'Reilly and Goldberg mostly appeared amused at the debacle, with O'Reilly wondering why Goldberg bothered to appear on Donny Deutsch's show in the first place. Apparently, its overnight Nielsen rating was a whopping 0.1, or around 70,000 -- and that after this blog and others "promoting" Goldberg's appearance for 30 hours or so. Goldberg's tongue-in-cheek response: "Well ... it seemed like a good idea at the time."

The tone remained light throughout the interview; when the satellite feed dropped out for a few seconds, both joked about Deutsch pulling the plug. Not as funny, though, was Goldberg's revelation that the Deutsch show edited down the segment. The show's 30-minute run time last night (when it normally runs an hour) makes it look like the Big Idea producers decided to do some heavy-duty whittling. That explains why it appears that Goldberg lost his temper so quickly with Linda Stasi. Interviews on cable news shows rarely edit content unless it violates FCC or libel/slander restrictions, and those who do reveal it. It looks like another example of a serious ethical lapse on the part of The Big Idea's producers and Deutsch.

The producer of the Donny Deutsch show tricked Bernard Goldberg into doing the segment where he was ganged up on. He was in a previous segment and was invited to stay on for the next one under the impression it would be an even match-up, not 5 v 1. Apparently this isn’t the first time a guest has been tricked into a segment like this; over at Captain Quarter’s, Ed has information from someone else who was almost tricked into doing what Bernie did. A poster at Free Republic is saying the producer resigned.

I'll let you know when my article about Bernie's new book is online; in the meantime, here are links to the two-part interview I had with him last year for Tech Central Station.

Update: Ian Schwartz of Political Teen emails, "it seems like ambushing their guests is a common practice at NBC networks".