Image description: a screenshot from the Wikipedia page for the Doctor Who TV series, with a user-added caption that reads "Preserve the media you can before it's gone forever." The Wikipedia article reads, "No 1960s episodes exist on their original videotapes (all surviving prints being film transfers), though some were transferred to film for editing before transmission and exist in their broadcast form. [88] Some episodes have been returned to the BBC from the archives of other countries that bought prints for broadcast or by private individuals who acquired them by various means. Early colour videotape recordings made off-air by fans have also been retrieved, as well as excerpts filmed from the television screen onto 8 mm cine film and clips that were shown on other programmes. Audio versions of all lost episodes exist from home viewers who made tape recordings of the show. Short clips from every story with the exception of Marco Polo (1964), "Mission to the Unknown" (1965) and The Massacre (1966) also exist."
Yes this is a real concern, this is called "cultural genocide" or destruction and is the kind of thing that expressive regimes do to their history or culture in order to mold generations of people to their desire... I wonder what's going on with the world right now.
Removing an episode for being racist (even though this one wasn't racist) is not cultural genocide. Wearing blackface (I know, this wasn't blackface) is not a culture that needs to be preserved.
Our mistakes as a culture absolutely need to be preserved in order to prevent history from repeating itself long after the people making said mistakes have passed on.
Not every part of preservation should be a celebration of the past. It is as vitally important that we learn the things we did wrong as well as right.
Just do what WB did and add a slide saying that these were products of their time and that we know better today.
Yes it is, you're destroying culture. And it isn't only one episode or one tv show, there are countless reports on episodes and movies that are suddenly missing parts, episodes etc because it "hurts" someone. Let alone "politically correct" remakes from Disney. How come you don't see this is what China and others do with imported media?