According to Hot Air, Jon Stewart's Daily Show is getting calls to release the full, unedited 18 minutes of their interview with Jonah Goldberg yesterday. This was boiled down to six minutes to air on TV. In and of itself isn't that isn’t that remarkable, except for the frustrated pseudo-apology that Stewart offers at the start of the clip, and the choppy footage that follows. ("At least Michael Moore is subtle when he does that", one of Jonah's readers quips.) It does seem remarkably dishonest rather curious that the Daily Show couldn't simply upload the raw camera footage from the VTR and the camera switcher to the 'Net. It's not like the bandwidth is costing them much money. (Or use YouTube or Brightcove or any one of a dozen different video aggregation sites if it is.)

For Pajamas' weekly PJM Political show on XM, I've had to edit numerous interviews for space requirements (particularly in the early days of the show, when I still learning the proportions and ingredients, and overbooked guests in fear that XM wouldn't appreciate gaps in the show--or worse, 55 continuous minutes of Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66 tunes on their presidential election channel.) But I also created the "Director's Cut" posts to upload the full length versions of those interviews if they aired in a truncated format. And if we can do it at Pajamas, there's simply no reason that Comedy Central, with a lot more manpower at their disposal, can't as well.

Well, there is a reason, and it's not one that's very flattering to the Daily Show and its host.

On the other hand, all of the controversy isn't hurting Jonah's book sales of course--it's currently #2 on Amazon.

Update (1/18/08 11:42 AM): Leftwingers explode as Jonah's book is number one on Amazon.