UPDATED: Why did CNN remove critical questions from discussion on Pentagon’s DADT survey of troops?

UPDATED BELOW WITH STATEMENT FROM CNN

On July 7, CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr discussed with anchor Drew Griffin the Pentagon’s survey of 200,000 active duty troops and 200,000 reserve troops concerning “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Here is the segment as captured by a YouTuber:

As Pam Spaulding points out on her blog, in the video clip above Starr lays out the rationale for a survey that asks such questions as if active duty and reserve troops would feel comfortable in the showers with openly gay or lesbian service members.

Oddly enough, a portion of the segment that aired was removed before it went up on CNN’s website.  The section in question has Griffin pushing back rather hard asking Starr:

Why do they care -- these joint chiefs -- these guys are paid to make decisions. Why are they sending out this public relations survey asking whoever wants to respond to this and supposedly going to use this to make a decision on this?

The CNN.com version of the segment:

As Spaulding notes:

Why? There's no real reason to do so, as it's a web clip, so time constraints aren't relevant. What editorial judgment was made that Griffin's interest in a logical reason for the survey is not newsworthy to readers of CNN's web site?

It’s a good question worthy of an answer from a cable network that spent much of June promoting its Gay in America special coverage focusing on the LGBT community.

UPDATE:

CNN provided Media Matters with the following statement this evening:

CNN didn’t edit out the question from Drew Griffin for editorial reasons. Sometimes we edit clips to a certain length because shorter clips tend to do better online. Drew was questioning a CNN correspondent and not a guest. If it were a guest or person who did the study, we would have certainly posted the segment in its entirety. The full segment is now streaming.