How to access TV news on any topic for the last three years

September 20, 2012 by Amara D. Angelica
internet_archive_news

(Credit: Internet Archive)

This is fantastic news for journalists and voters: the Internet Archive has launched the free TV News Search & Borrow service.

The collection now contains 350,000 news programs collected over 3 years from national U.S. networks and stations in San Francisco and Washington D.C.  The archive is updated with new broadcasts 24 hours after they are aired.  Older materials are also being added.

“This service is designed to “help engaged citizens better understand the issues and candidates in the 2012 U.S. elections by allowing them to search closed captioning transcripts to borrow relevant television news programs,” the announcement reads.

They plan to extend this all the way back to the beginning of television.

For another story today on automated drone and aircraft collision avoidance, I tried it out with a search on “drone” and “collision” since June, and instantly got these very relevant TV news clips:

I did find that it isn’t working well yet with the Chrome browser.

Note: I was once assigned to develop a similar TV news system before the Web. I quickly discovered there was no practical way to do it,  so I’m definitely impressed. Kudos to the amazing Brewster Kahle and his team!