BET’s video pivot removes decades of Black journalism from its website

Thousands of articles dating to 2000 disappeared from BET.com without warning, leaving writers without easy access to their published work. The media organization’s redesigned website directs audiences toward video.

By EEW Magazine Online News Editors

Nearly 187,000 articles have disappeared from BET.com following the network’s shift to a video-focused website, taking decades of reporting on Black news, politics, entertainment and culture off the live site.

HuffPost deputy editor Phil Lewis reported the removal on Sept. 4, saying some writers had saved copies of their work while others had not. The Internet Archive’s BET.com Article Explorer identifies 186,705 articles formerly published on the site, including 116,893 with bylines from 4,135 writers. Its oldest listings date to January 2000.

Archived copies of many stories remain available through the Wayback Machine.

BET announced the redesigned site on Aug. 18, saying it would move away from operating as a standalone publisher and direct visitors to content on YouTube, social platforms, Paramount+ and BET. The company also outlined a new approach to BET News built around people reporting on their own communities on camera. The announcement did not say its existing written archive would be removed.

Culture reporter Njera Perkins told HuffPost that losing access to years of reporting without warning was disheartening. Writers increasingly bear the responsibility of preserving their own work, she said.

Paul Meara, who spent eight years at BET Digital, called the removal a “nail in the coffin,” theGrio reported.

The loss of those bylines comes amid limited opportunities for Black reporters.

Black journalists accounted for 6% of reporting journalists surveyed by Pew Research Center in 2022, compared with 11% of U.S. workers. Last year, the National Association of Black Journalists condemned NBC News layoffs that dismantled the dedicated teams behind NBC BLK and several other outlets focused on underrepresented communities.

Published articles serve as clips when journalists seek assignments or jobs. They also provide readers, students and researchers with a record of how events were reported at the time.

BET’s articles can be searched by writer, year, section and text through the Internet Archive’s explorer, although a story can be retrieved only if it was captured.

BET has not publicly said whether it will restore the archive to its website or give writers access to copies of their work.

BET Media Group is part of Paramount, a Skydance Corporation. Paramount also took the MTV News archive offline in 2024, a year after shutting down that news operation.

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