The mainstream American media “New York Times”, “Washington Post” and “Los Angeles Times” all stated that they would not purchase Twitter’s Twitter Blue authentication service for their official Twitter accounts or journalists’ accounts because this certification no longer represents authority and professionalism as before.
Elon Musk
Starting last Saturday, Twitter began removing its long-used authentication badge. So far, the gold accreditation badge on the official New York Times account has been removed. In a since-deleted tweet, Twitter boss Elon Musk said the company would give unpaid verified accounts a “grace period” of several weeks until they made it clear they would not pay. The certification mark will be removed. The New York Times has previously said that it will not pay $1,000 a month to keep the gold certification mark, nor will it pay its employees to keep the blue certification mark.
“We do not intend to pay monthly for the verification status of our official Twitter account,” said a spokesperson for The New York Times, “nor will we reimburse journalists who use Twitter Blue for personal accounts, except in extreme cases. In a few cases this accreditation status was critical to coverage.”
The New York Times has lost its gold certification mark
The Washington Post also said it “would not pay for the Twitter Blue service as an agency or on behalf of our journalists” because it was “clear that the accreditation mark no longer signifies authority and expertise.” Los Angeles Times executive editor Sara Yasin wrote in an internal memo that the company does not plan to pay employees for Twitter Blue subscriptions for now, noting that Twitter is “not as reliable as it used to be.”, certification “no longer establishes authority or credibility.” For now, the official Twitter account of the Los Angeles Times still retains the gold badge of accreditation.
In addition, the BBC will not pay for journalists’ personal accreditation services. Leaders at The Verge, The Huffington Post, and news aggregator BuzzFeed News also told employees that they would not fund individual subscriptions for employees.
