Originally Posted by
mspflier
In general, there are not pre-flight "agreements." Crews simply show up at the check-in counter, present valid, current media credentials -- either issued by their outlet and/or a government entity (e.g. state legislature, U.S. Congress, White House, police department, etc) -- the TA takes a look, verifies the name on the credential matches the name on the ticket, and that's it.
Yes, that's how it worked for years and years, until this recent change. No more. I've had colleagues in both the news side (photographer for Reuters) and the commercial filmmaking side be denied media rate in the past two weeks as they hadn't been pre-approved 72h in advance.
The old policy was in place as recently as September 28th (from the Internet Archive:
Special Items | Baggage : Delta Air Lines). It's a bit unreasonable to change longstanding policy with less than two weeks notice (Oct 8 activation date), and with no formal notice to anyone other than an obscure policy change buried on the website.