Why is Forbes’ listing valued so much?
National dailies and individuals often tout the value of being listed in some random ‘top 10′ Forbes listing, as if it is an absolute recognition. However, Forbes’ is not without its controversies. While touted as the ‘pinnacle’ of an international certifier of ‘excellence’, there are certain journalistic practices that should make one take Forbes’ listing with an ‘added’ grain of salt.
Pay-to-Play
While not an issue exclusive to Forbes( *cough cough RONB cough cough*), Forbes engages in pay-to-play meaning it takes some kind of payment feature a brand/individual. An article by Jon Christian exposes writer’s engaging in favorable articles in exchange for payments. ‘Credible’ news outlets like Business Insider, Huffington Post and Forbes not having significant level of editorial check and balance system makes its listing criteria by default suspect.
Overreliance on unvetted ‘contributors’
With a rapid growth in digital content production, most news outlets have realized that ‘clickbait’ and overexposed constant barrage of contents is a necessary ‘go-to’ mechanisms in order to sustain a media business. Gone are the days when the newspaper would have to carefully sort out its contents to fill certain number of pages. Today, with a click of a button, one can inundate their consumers with a barrage of content. Even better, if you have click-bait titles( something, we at BrandGuff sadly need as well to engage our audience). However, it is the sheer number of unvetted random contributors that Forbes relies on that makes one take a serious look. Forbes has, according to its own statement, more than 2800 contributors. Can you seriously expect, any sort of editorial control and vetting with the sheer number of articles and contributors Forbes hosts?
Forbes has often landed in controversy because of its contributors. Just to take an example:
Heather Morgan, who has been accused of laundering bitcoin worth $4.5 billion, and is currently being prosecuted, was one of the star ‘contributors’ for Forbes with over 47 articles under her kitty. Ironically, she even wrote an article on how to ‘protect your business from cybercriminals’
Forbes’ uninterest in weeding out bad-faith ‘contributors’
With most news medias, a pertinent problem is media/writers acting like marketers in bad-faith. However, with Forbes’ contributors, marketers have become writers. Lot of contributors are used to ghost-write articles by the PR firms. For example, an article in 2013 mentioned Jeffrey Epstein as ‘one of the largest backer of cutting-edge science’ without mentioning his criminal background. It turned out later that a PR firm had ghost-written the article.
Why Forbes’ should not be taken too seriously
Founded in the 20th century, Forbes carries a rich legacy ergo being featured on Forbes, especially in poor countries like Nepal, carries a unique oomph factor. When a Nepali individual/organization/brand gets listed on Forbes, it is amplified through national dailies, as if Nepal landed a shuttle on Mars.
This is not to undermine those Nepalis who have been featured by Forbes. In their own right, they are big role-models having accomplished what most of us can only dream about. However, our critique is against this overreliance and need on a legacy old media that has slowly devolved into something worse than tabloid news media. Forbes’ listings and articles are suspect precisely for the reasons mentioned above. All we are trying to emphasize on is to emphasize on the need to deemphasize the ‘value’ of Forbes’ listings, in order to invalidate the need for their validation.
