Though it seems we’re awash in information, those who “own” the information don’t treat it with much respect. If not for the perpetually endangered Wayback Machine, the work of hundreds of journalists would be lost to the Digital Dark Ages. At a time when news outlets are shuttering due to a localized epidemic of CEOs with AI psychosis, we’re losing another one.
BET Digital, owned by the same media-consolidating Ellison family running CBS ragged, has removed its news archive, per social media’s most on-the-ball newshound and HuffPost Deputy Editor Phil Lewis. According to Lewis, the move is part of a throwback strategy many are familiar with: Pivot to video. “BET Digital has permanently removed all its digital news articles from its website to ‘prioritize video content,'” Lewis wrote on BlueSky. “Years of news articles are now gone forever. Some writers were able to save their stories; some weren’t.”
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. Anyway, Paramount’s owners and their dads are currently looking to buy Warner Bros., which owns CNN. We’re sure that after spending $112 billion on that news site, Ellison will leave it as is and won’t simply repeat his CBS clusterfuck.
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