'Stewart's best lines, most effective arguments, and most convincing evidence' never shown to Fox audience

Gawker compiles video collection of best unaired clips...

Brad Friedman Byon 2/5/2010, 3:42pm PT

If you watched the two separate nights over which Bill O'Reilly cut up his O'Reilly Factor interview with Jon Stewart on Fox "News" this week, as we did, you probably found that both nights fell surprisingly flat, given that Stewart, at least, usually offers a reason to make these things "must watch" moments.

Well, there's a reason it fell flat, as noted by Gawker today, O'Reilly cut out most of the best stuff...

Fox News has generously placed the full, unedited conversation between Bill O'Reilly and Jon Stewart online , so we can see precisely how unfairly and deviously Fox edited the interview in order to weaken Stewart's case: A lot! Last night on his show-Part Two of a ludicrously overhyped "faceoff" between O'Reilly and Stewart in which Stewart attempted, among other things, to present a critique of Fox as a fear-mongering GOP messaging operation-O'Reilly boasted that his edit of their 42-minute interview for broadcast was "a fair cut" and invited viewers to have a look at the unedited version online to judge for themselves: "Some of these idiots in the press who hate us, 'O'Reilly cut the interview to make Stewart look'-OK, all of that is bull. It's a fair cut. And then when you watch the cut and watch the whole interview you'll see it." So we took him up on the offer, and guess what? If by "fair cut" O'Reilly means "cut in a manner that left some of Stewart's best lines, most effective arguments, and most convincing evidence out of the interview and hidden from the broadcast audience," then he's absolutely right.

Gawker's selection of some of the best video that never made air --- along with descriptions of how some of them were cleverly gutted before making it onto air --- is posted right here.

Now they've got the "must watch" stuff. Really. And all of it, far more entertaining and interesting and challenging than what actually made it onto O'Reilly's air. Go figure.



