What's the deal with Forbes Magazine?
I don't read Forbes, but I've always assumed it to be a fairly sound financial magazine, an institution perhaps in the same general neighborhood as Wall Street Journal, Barron's, Financial Times, etc. But I'm noticing more and more that my lefty Facebook friends are posting links like this. I know this specific article is commentary rather than a hard news article, but it reads more like something I'd see on Huffington Post or Mother Jones. And this isn't unusual, there are many articles like this on Forbes. What the deal? Has Forbes recently veered leftward (à la Newsweek), or have I just been oblivious to their political slant all along? Isn't Steve Forbes supposed to be one of those hated capitalist/flat-tax one-percenters?
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Answer by bluerose
My husband and I have subscribed to Forbes for many years. You may be surprised to learn that Bono, yes of U2, is a part owner of Forbes since 2006. He is part of an investor group that bought a stake in Forbes media in 2006. Read the New York Times about it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/business/media/07carr.html. While that doesn't mean Bono has editorial influence, and I don't know anything about Bono's views on economics anyway, but I have noticed in recent years that Forbes has attempted to get slicker but offers less substance. It may be just a symptom of the magazine industry, which is getting squeezed like all traditional media. Every issue seems to be centered around a list now and their ideas are sometimes fanciful. The September 26, 2011 cover was Social Power and the Coming Corporate Revolution: Why Employees and Customers will be Calling the Shots. Are you kidding me? In a world of 12% real unemployment and no way of knowing where the juice concentrate in your kid's drink box was manufactured? Steve Forbes' commentary always seems spot on to me though, and the magazine is in the difficult business of predicting the future. It has forthrightly explained when predictions turned out wrong, so that's why we've stuck to our subscription.
On the other hand, Forbes is not likely to forthrightly explain why Ungar was wrong in the 3/4/11 column that Doherty linked. Scott Walker did win and his policies are helping teachers by saving their jobs. See Ungar's latest missive about Walker, http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/05/09/scott-walker-using-100-million-of-taxpayer-money-to-fight-off-recall/, brushes off collective bargaining because its obviously not a good argument for him.
Keith Doherty: Excellent! Thank you for the thorough response!
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- · May 12, 2012 at 8:52am
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Keith Doherty: BTW I tried to add a tag to this post ("Media Bias"); I couldn't get it to work. Maybe its a Firefox thing? Does anyone else have trouble with that?
The Logo: It's a restriction in the system designed to keep the taxonomy from propagating too rapidly.
Mr. Bildo: I just recently read another unrelated article from Forbes and remember thinking the exact same thing. I was surprised by the tone, which, if I recall, was strangely anti-free market.
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