Forbes removes article about Jeffrey Epstein

Forbes magazine has removed an article about money manager Jeffrey Epstein, now accused of raping dozens of underage girls, writes Tiffany Hsu of the New York Times, after he was released from prison on other charges.

Hsu writes, “The article on the Forbes website was attributed to Drew Hendricks, a contributing writer. As The Times revealed in an article last week, he was not the author of the piece. Instead, it was delivered to him by a public relations firm, and he said he was paid $600 to attach his byline and post it at Forbes.com.

“Mr. Hendricks said he had not been aware of Mr. Epstein’s history. ‘All I knew was, this is a guy doing a science thing,’ he said. ‘If I had known otherwise, I wouldn’t have done it.’

“Forbes removed the item last week ‘for failing to meet our editorial standards,’ it said in an editors note on the page.

“Randall Lane, the chief content officer of Forbes Media, said an article like the one attributed to Mr. Hendricks should not have been posted and would not make the cut now, because the process for screening outside contributors has been strengthened.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.