Why is that a bad thing? It's clearly marked as an archive. I'm also not sure how that fixes the problem, considering that people could still pass around images, which are pretty much taken as seriously as the real site.

I didn't say it was. I was just guessing at a possible reason they might have done it. I've seen anti-vax folks pass around archive.org links as well as pictures of stuff that was taken down/corrected before.

The fact that we have had good version control for decades and the journalism industry has not adopted it tells you their motives. It's like a godsend to someone who views themselves as a journalist, the ability to always be able to demonstrate their integrity. It almost takes more effort to not adopt it.