[2] Later titled MTV News Need to Know, the show has evolved to a digital series that covers trending topics from pop culture to social justice issues to electoral politics and beyond.
It first began covering political news in the 1992 American presidential elections, through its "Choose or Lose" campaign.
For the 2008 election, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton appeared on an MTV special to discuss the Iraq war.
[9] In November 2015, MTV introduced a new direction for its news department and hired Dan Fierman, former editorial director of Grantland, as MTV's editorial director and announced it would produce long-form journalism, think pieces and diversify its staff.
However, in June 2017, MTV decided to restructure its news division with a greater focus on video, laying off much of their editorial staff.
[4] In response to the archives being removed, Michael Alex, the founding editor of MTV News' digital organization from 1994 until 2007, stated: But if history has taught us one thing, it's that archives are valuable – for decades, recording studios threw away priceless master tapes left behind by everyone from the Rolling Stones to James Brown… until they started appearing on bootlegs and the artists and labels began spending thousands to get them back.
[13] In July 2024, the Internet Archive launched an independent[13][14] "searchable index of 460,575 web pages previously published at mtv.com/news" dating back to 1997 on the Wayback Machine.