When I left journalism in the early 90s to pursue a career in corporate PR, I was aghast at how many executives perceived the media. There was a widespread belief that publications and journalists were bought and paid for, either through advertising or other monetary relationships. I passionately assured my clients that wasn’t the case with major publications.
The credibility of media and journalists has plummeted in the ensuing decades, with one Gallup poll showing that broadcast media’s credibility with the American public is just a tad higher than Congress. The American media is nonplussed by these findings, with many journalists viewing themselves as smarter and wiser than their audiences. The Titanic had an orchestra to comfort the ship’s passengers, and broadcast media has its Edward R. Murrow awards.
The reputation of American journalism took another beating in recent days with the New York Times’ bombshell exclusive that Randall Lane, the former Chief Content Officer of Forbes, was fired last month after the company discovered he had accepted an undisclosed $6 million payment from the founder of a research firm that partners with the magazine to publish its annual wealth adviser rankings.
Lane should consider himself blessed that the story was penned by veteran media journalist Benjamin Mullin, whose reporting was impressively fair and balanced given Lane’s betrayal of Forbes and the black eye he administered to American journalism.
As reported by Mullin, Lane was paid by RJ Shook, whose company, Shook Research, has teamed up with Forbes since 2016 to publish rankings of wealth advisers. The payment was made after Shook sold a majority stake in Shook Research to private equity firm PPC Enterprises.
Citing an unnamed “person familiar with Mr. Lane’s thinking,” Mullin reported that Lane considered the payment a gift in recognition of the advice he had provided Shook over the years. Mullin also noted that Lane did not oversee the day-to-day business relationship with Shook Research, according to “two people familiar with the magazine’s publication of the rankings.”
That detail seemingly mitigates the perception of a direct financial quid pro quo between Forbes’ publication and implied endorsement of Shook’s rankings, on the one hand, and Lane’s acceptance of what he characterized as a gift from a friend, on the other.
Sara Grillo, who heads the Transparent Advisor Movement, a professional community promoting clarity, fairness, and client advocacy in financial advice, remains unconvinced.
“There were probably more people involved than just Mr. Lane and Mr. Shook, and there should be an investigation of everyone involved with this relationship, in any capacity,” Grillo told RIABIZ, a wealth advisory publication. “People probably covered up whatever was happening for years.”
“It’s unclear what the ‘advice provided over the years’ is,” she said. “Why would a journalist be giving a research company advice? Was it about how to do research?”
Grillo provided no evidence to substantiate her suspicions, and Molly Bennard, whom PPC installed to oversee Shook Research, flatly rejected them.
RIABIZ reported that Bennard emailed advisors assuring them that Shook and Lane are no longer with the company and that, regardless, they had done nothing improper in connection with the advisor rankings.
“Shook and Forbes have cooperated to investigate this matter. Forbes and Shook Research, with the assistance of their respective outside counsel, each examined this issue extensively and found no evidence that it had any relationship with the rankings process,” Bennard said.
She added: “Neither Randall Lane nor Forbes have ever had involvement in Shook’s research process or the creation of any rankings.”
If Bennard’s account is accurate, why didn’t Forbes also disclose that to its employees and readers?
After Mullin’s story broke, Forbes Media CEO Sherry Phillips sent a brief staff message saying she couldn’t discuss confidential personnel matters. Two days later, she told employees, “I recognize how unsettling it is to learn information of this nature through the media,” before serving up this sanctimony:
Integrity and ethical behavior in our journalism and in our business dealings, particularly from our leaders, is paramount to who we are as an organization. This commitment guides our behavior with each other, our partners, our clients, and our audiences. Mutual trust and transparency are required.
Mutual trust and transparency?
Phillips allowed Forbes to get scooped by the New York Times on a major story affecting the publication and its employees, leaving another media outlet to shape the narrative. Mullin reported that a Forbes spokeswoman only confirmed Lane was no longer with the publication.
Had the spokeswoman also disclosed that lawyers for Forbes and Shook Research had investigated the payment and concluded it had no connection to the rankings, I’m certain Mullin would have included that critical fact.
Whether Forbes’ and Shook Research’s lawyers reached the right conclusion is almost beside the point. The damage was done the moment the payment became public. The episode inevitably casts a harsher light on the magazine’s advisor rankings, an enterprise that has long blurred the line between journalism and commerce.
Advisor rankings published by Forbes and Barron’s have been a source of contention and controversy for years. They are highly subjective, and while there has never been evidence of blatant pay-for-play, advisors voluntarily pay after receiving a ranking, including for licensing packages, trophies, republishing rights to display the Forbes seal on their websites and client brochures, and awards dinners.
“This award problem is a symptom of a much bigger disease; there’s an absolute lack of transparency in all aspects of financial advisor marketing, from fee quotes to description of what services they provide to their track record of working with clients,” Grillo previously told RIABIZ.
The SEC in 2024 clamped down on how wealth advisors promoted their awards, imposing $2.29 million in penalties on 23 firms for violating its marketing rule.
“Many readers have a grudging acceptance that business publications need a side hustle to get by. Maybe they do. But when one of your editors gets $6 million from the owner of the company that executes your side business, it’s still going to be uncomfortable,” said Brooke Southall, founder of RIABIZ.
“It just reminds people that this whole thing with ‘best of’ lists never really looked like a pure journalistic endeavor in the first place. And so, are you really a journalistic publication? Maybe not totally. And is your third-party view about financial advisors really all that valuable or legitimate?”
The advisor rankings aren’t the only Forbes franchise whose credibility suffered under Lane’s watch. The pattern extended well beyond wealth advisor rankings.
Lane was responsible for launching Forbes’ runaway 30 Under 30 feature, an engine that repeatedly celebrated young wunderkinds who later found themselves in federal court. Among them: Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried, and Frank founder Charlie Javice.
Forbes’ eagerness to spotlight minority entrepreneurs also produced embarrassing failures of journalistic due diligence, including Joanna Smith Griffin, founder of AllHere, who made the 30 Under 30 list before being indicted for fraud after allegedly fabricating $3.7 million in revenue when the AI company generated only about $11,000. Another example was Daniella Pierson , whom Forbes hailed as “one of the wealthiest women of color in the US,” with an estimated $220 million net worth based on an unverified company valuation. To its credit, Forbes later published a scathing follow up investigation titled, Smoke And Mirrors: How This Entrepreneur Exaggerated And Self Promoted Her Way Into Turmoil.
Pamela Norton, a Jackson, Wyoming, entrepreneur, posted the following graphic on Benjamin Mullin’s LinkedIn page. Whether viewed as coincidence, editorial failure, or some combination of both, it captures the recurring pattern that came to define Forbes under Lane’s editorial leadership.
Viewed individually, each of these episodes has its own explanation. Collectively, they describe a publication whose editorial judgment steadily lost credibility under the direction of an influential and prominent editor who led the publication for 15 years.
It’s ultimately immaterial whether Lane’s $6 million payment constituted any wrongdoing beyond violating Forbes’ own disclosure rules. The public, particularly those in the wealth advisory industry, isn’t going to wade through the weeds.
All many will know and remember is that a top editor at a well-known publication received a $6 million payment from someone whose business benefited from a relationship with that publication. It is precisely the perception I spent years assuring corporate executives wasn’t how credible journalism worked.
And while Lane told Mullin that failing to disclose the “gift” was “a serious error in judgment,” he apparently expressed no regrets about accepting the money.