Digital Preservation: Internet Archive Releases Online Archive (199,000 Articles) of BET Journalism No Longer Available on the Live Web

From the Internet Archive (via Bluesky, X, and Mastodon):

Much of BET’s digital journalism is no longer available on the live web. Internet Archive has preserved more than 199,000 BET articles over the years. They can now be accessed through

The Wayback Machine

& a new pilot explorer: https://wayback-labs.sf.archive.org/bet-explorer/

 

Background

From Huff Post:

Black Entertainment Television, more commonly known as BET, has removed all digital articles from its website in a push to prioritize video content, HuffPost’s Phil Lewis reported Friday.

Multimedia reporting remains on the site and BET’s social channels. However, the move to erase the written content came without warning, leaving many writers with no trace of their work, Lewis reported.

“Years of news articles are now gone forever,” he wrote.

While BET was once known as the pinnacle of Black media, its decision to remove these digital articles adds to an already fragile state of journalism, especially the Black press, as the Trump administration continues to target press freedom and diversity, equity and inclusion.

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From AV Club

While it’s not uncommon for websites to degrade as soon as a media tycoon realizes there actually isn’t a ton of profit in reporting the news, BET Digital is one of the rare outlets that highlighted Black voices. By wiping the archive, Paramount essentially erases that perspective on a very consequential period in American history. Sadly, this isn’t Paramount’s first rodeo. In the pre-Ellison days of 2024, Paramount scrubbed decades of music news from MTV’s website.

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Filed under: Digital Preservation, News, Preservation