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Following the death of civil rights leader Coretta Scott King in 2006, BET broadcast its regularly scheduled music video programming rather than cover King's funeral live as CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, and BET competitors TV One and Black Family Channel were.

The BET website streamed the funeral live ; BET broadcast taped, 60-second reports periodically from the funeral by senior news correspondent Andre Showell.

Michael Lewellen, BET's senior vice president for corporate communications, defended the decision: " We weighed a number of different options.

In the end, we chose to offer a different kind of experience for BET viewers.

" Lewellen also said that BET received around " two dozen " phone calls and " a handful " of emails criticizing BET for not showing the King funeral live.

On the evening of the funeral day ( February 7, 2006 ), BET broadcast tribute special Coretta Scott King: Married to the Mission and repeated it the following Sunday, February 12.

Showell hosted a program featuring highlights of the funeral, Coretta Scott King: Celebrating Her Spirit, that broadcast that same day.

In its 2007 convention, the National Association of Black Journalists gave BET its Thumbs Down Award for not broadcasting King's funeral live.