New York Times loses gold X badge

The New York Times lost the gold badge, signifying a verified organization, on its X account yesterday. Elon Musk, owner of X, allegedly ordered the change in consequence of the paper’s coverage of the Gaza Hospital Incident. The change has brought angry reaction, some directed at the Times, other directed at Musk. Some view the change as symptomatic of “Zionist control of the media.”

How The New York Times lost its badge

Multiple outlets, including even The Gateway Pundit, apparently rushed to judgment on the first reports concerning the Al Ahli Hospital. At first everyone assumed that an Israeli airstrike (or rocket) severely damaged the hospital and killed about 500 people. Gradually the truth came out – that a HAMAS-allied group fired a brace of missiles that overflew the hospital. One flamed out, its warhead detonated, and debris fell into the hospital parking lot. There its unburned fuel blew up, burning out several cars. The worst current casualty estimates are between 10 and 50 people caught in the parking lot at the time.

The New York Times, according to Town Hall and The Gateway Pundit, changed its headline three times:

Note the canard: “ZIONIST CONTROL OF THE MEDIA.” This although one would expect The New York Times to take a pro-Israel stance since the Fourth Arab-Israeli War began. (At least, one would expect that, were the canard true.) This next post focuses the criticism squarely at the Times:

Yesterday morning, followers of the Times’ X account noticed that the gold “verified organization” badge was missing from its title. A few ours later the account title sported the blue checkmark of a paid verification subscription.

Elon Musk had earlier criticized the Times as, essentially, yesterday’s news.

That’s part of his broader attack on legacy media, whom he accuses of cribbing from X in all their reporting.