One More Forbes Post

Leo Zuckermann devoted his last two columns to the magazine's billionaires list, the first dealing with the ups and downs in the rankings, the second expressing anger over Forbes' decision to grant Chapo Guzmán a spot on the list. He mentions that, as far as we can tell from its explanations, Forbes' methodology boiled down to assigning the Sinaloa cartel 20 percent of the money estimated to have been laundered by Mexican and Colombian cartels and assuring that such a sum is sufficient for its leader to have accumulated $1 billion. If that's all it amounts to, that is just a laughingly unserious form of accounting. 

The author then wonders why other nations' criminals didn't appear on the list. I second this question: to take but one nation's example, the Italian mafia group known as the 'Ndrangheta are estimated to earn revenues of about 3 percent of Italy's $1.7 trillion GDP, or about $51 billion annually. Even if that number is inflated, using the Forbes accounting methods, how is it possible that there are no 'Ndrangheta bosses on the Forbes list?

Zuckermann also points out that the magazine ran an article titled "Cocaine King" about Chapo, and suggests that his placement on the list was a marketing tactic to ignite a scandal, drum up interest in the article, and drive up sales. This I find less convincing; the article seems like it was a response to his placement on the list, and from what I gather, the presence of a Mexican drug lord is not much of a scandal in the States, the primary market for the magazine. But it's odd that Forbes, which was among the first American media sources to suggest that Mexico was a failed state, has once again made an exceedingly questionable assertion that makes Mexico look bad.

Zuckermann's withering finale includes a journalistic dilemma:

Little by little, a horrible image of Mexico is forming in the US. In the always thorny area of criminality, our country has already replaced Colombia. We are the nation that now has the narco-billionaire. The truth is that I don't know if El Chapo does or doesn't have a billion dollars. He probably has around that. Because of the nature of his business, it's almost impossible to calculate it. The only thing that's clear to me is that the journalistic decision of Forbes doesn't help at all to resolve the terrible problem that we have in Mexico: how the organized crime is wearing away the state. The editors at Forbes don't understand nor do they care. For them it was more amusing to set off a scandal so as to sell more. What irresponsibility! If that's the type of journalism they want to practice, then they should a naked woman on the cover of the magazine just like the tabloids that have so much commercial success. 

Zuckermann implies (and other points states outright) that the decision to include a criminal on the list was in and of itself irresponsible, regardless of the laughable explanation for how the magazine arrived at the billion-dollar fortune. I'm not convinced such was the case; if the editors at Forbes could verify their assertion, would it really be irresponsible to include Chapo? Of course it would send a bad message, but at what point does a magazine's foremost preoccupation go from disseminating the truth to regulating the morals of its articles? I'm not saying Zuckermann is wrong here, I'm just not certain that I think he's right.