I'm going to go ahead and say that the last 5 years did in fact show that journalists cannot be trusted. I will agree that random persons paying $20 obliterates what was already an embarrassingly low bar. Really, opening it up just expanded the pool of what was already just influencers/activists. And why did celebrities have the bluecheck? It's probably more useful as a verification mechanism.

Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding, but wasnt that the original purpose of the blue checkmark - a verification that the twitter account was who they are saying they are, be it a person, company, etc?

It was a status symbol pretending to be a verification. There was a reason the people were referred to as "blue checks". And it could be taken away if you fell afoul of the prevailing norms at the time.