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Friday, August 22, 2014

CENSORSHIP! Forbes Deletes Pro-Israel Opinion Piece

On his "Forbes Magazine" blog, lobbyist and public relations-superstar Jeff Ballabon published a piece called "The 20 Most Ridiculous Things People Believe About The Hamas/Israel Conflict.” Within hours of the article going live, the post was taken down. Ballabon was given conflicting reasons for the removal of the post. The one reason he wasn't given was the most obvious one: "Forbes Magazine" did not like the post's pro-Israel content.

After posting the article the morning of August 8th, Ballabon began to hear from friends that it was gone.


A few hours later Ballabon got the official news:


Eventually, he reposted the article at the Gatestone Institute:

"Buzzfeed" asked about the pulling of the article:
Forbes has since given him “conflicting and changing reasons,” as to why they took down the post, the most recent of which was “It’s just a list of links.” “There was no discussion of style, there was no discussion of format…All of those things could have been changed,” Ballabon said. “The only thing that can’t be changed is the substance.”

He said he believes the impetus for its removal was that “it was linked to a very controversial issue on which they’re taking a side.”

“I always thought that’s what opinion columns are for,” he said.

Mia Carbonell, Forbes’ SVP of Communications, didn’t respond to detailed questions about the decision and said in an email only that “this post failed to meet Forbes’ editorial standards.”
Ballabon has been unable to access his Forbes contributor account since the post was removed. His future status as a Forbes contributor remains unclear.
“I don’t think what they did can be justified and I think that’s why they’re not justifying it,” he said.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

As Glenn Reynolds says...Democratic Operatives with by lines. HAMAS bad... Israel WORSE.

Unknown said...

There IS a reason Forbes has become irrelevant on the national/world scene

Unknown said...

I'm sorry Mr. Ballabon but, if Forbes pulled it because of the "style" and for no other reason, I would agree with them.
I followed the link to Gatestone and I found the article frustrating to "use".
I know what you are trying to do and I agree but, it could have been done better.
A lot better.

Unknown said...

I have to agree with Nick having seen the piece if I was a Forbes editor I wouldn't have run it as is.

If he fleshed out each item perhaps instead of linking to titles linked the articles within the piece and perhaps highlighting key ones (For example the UNRWA is Hamas story linked should be quoted and sent to every member of house Appropriations ) it could have worked but as is, nah.


As for potentially zapping his Forbes account over one poorly structured post, that's another matter