Self-Defense

Steve Forbes released a statement in defense of his magazine's decision to place Chapo Guzmán on the list of the world's richest inhabitants. The gist of it is, we are just doing our job as reporters, don't shoot the messenger. He also noted that the magazine had previously included Meyer Lansky and Pablo Escobar on its list. 

That might be a reasonable defense had the magazine offered a convincing portrait of Guzmán's earnings, but it didn't. It turned what was basically loose estimates and back-of-the-cocktail-napkin arithmetic into a figure that, rightly or wrongly, will affect the way people see Mexico. I understand the decision to include Guzmán could be portrayed as a piece of objective journalism, but the problem is that, based on what the magazine has said, the way Forbes arrived at its sum is totally unreliable. It fails any reasonable standard of journalistic rigor.  

Nor do I find the inclusion of Lansky and Escobar particularly helpful. How is it that the only two other criminals to have achieved world's-richest status were also figures of immense interest in the American media? (Both men appeared long after achieving notoriety in the States.) That's quite a coincidence. Are there no super-rich criminals who are not well known in the States? There are two possible answers: 1) No, there aren't any such criminals, which is rather implausible; or, 2) Of course there are, but Forbes can't expected to uncover every criminal in the world, it can only be responsible for those we know abut. If that's your answer, then that's an admission that the list is inherently flawed when dealing with the underworld, which would seem to be a pretty strong argument for not including any criminals.