After the Times announced it would not meet an April 1 deadline for Twitter users to pay to keep their verification check, Musk yanked the blue mark known as “Twitter Blue.”
Dan Schneider, an attorney and a vice president at the Media Research Center, tells AFN the Times needs to look in the mirror since it charges people to access its own news website.
“Why is it,” Schneider asks rhetorically, “that Elon Musk is not allowed to charge a fee but the New York Times charges exorbitant fees to people?”
The answer may be the Times despises the billionaire and his political shift to the right over free speech, and so paying the $1,000 monthly fee (the verification fee for businesses and organizations) indirectly puts money in his pocket.
Musk, known for a sharp sense of humor, responded to the Times that the “real tragedy” about losing its blue check is its “propaganda isn’t even interesting.”
“I think Musk understands that if he wants his platform, the Twitter platform, to be pro-free speech, he shouldn't be doing The New York Times any favors,” Schneider observes.
Musk has also described the Times as "far left brainwashing" in the past.
In a hit piece about Musk's upbringing in South Africa, published in May, the Times suggested he was sheltered from that country's racist policies. That story somehow tied that "elite" upbringing to his ownership of Twitter.
"He sees his takeover of Twitter as a free speech win," the Times, using its free Twitter account, claimed, "but in his youth did not suffer the effects of misinformation."
