The “Larry King Live” talk show on CNN often tries to enliven political commentary with gossip and celebrity guests. But when a postelection session last Wednesday strayed into speculation about some politicians’ sex lives, CNN first put the gossip on the air — and then tried to erase the evidence.

During the comedian Bill Maher’s appearance on the show Wednesday, he and Mr. King discussed several of the factors contributing to the Democrats’ election victory the day before, among them scandals involving several Republicans, including Representative Mark Foley. Mr. Maher then began to speculate on the sexual orientation of some high-ranking Republican officials, and Mr. King, seeming to forget that he was on the air, asked for names.

The comments were broadcast live, but CNN’s rebroadcast of the show later that evening cut a portion of Mr. Maher’s remarks. In addition, the transcript presented on CNN’s Web site, as well as the one provided to the LexisNexis archiving database, also omits the comments, noting that “a portion of this transcript has been removed.” (A spokeswoman for Nexis said that CNN was responsible for any editing of the transcript.) A video clip from the show available on cnn.com ends right before Mr. King asked Mr. Maher for his opinion about the Mark Foley scandal.

But in the blogosphere, where CNN was widely accused of censorship, the unedited version of Mr. Maher’s remarks was available: a video clip from the show’s original broadcast was quickly posted on youtube.com by John Aravosis, the writer of Americablog (americablog.blogspot.com). A day later, CNN complained of copyright infringement and YouTube removed the clip (YouTube declined to comment).