Saturday, April 20, 2024

No Heroes Here: The Kardashians Lied to Forbes About Kylie Jenner’s Billionaire Status, and Forbes Loved It

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‘m not surprised that they are now at the center of their own controversy about Kylie Jenner, the Kardashians, and Kylie’s billionaire status.

The fact is, Forbes is now unmasking their own bad reporting. They’ve published an article that contradicts their original piece, from 2019, declaring Kylie Jenner “the youngest billionaire” in the world.

What the new article fails to admit is that Forbes started all this in the first place. Their reporter, Natalie Robehmed, is gone from the magazine and relegated in the new piece by Chase Peterson-Withorn (Malcolm Forbes would have loved that byline) and Madeline Berg an “additional reporting” credit. (On her Twitter page, Robehmed id’s herself as “freelance journalist mostly working in audio, formerly @Forbes.”)

Robehmed seems like she was the one duped by the Kardashians about Kylie Jenner’s billionaire status. But didn’t it make sense? Kylie, 21, with no education, no wherewithal of any kind, a fashion model more because of notoriety of her awful family than any real talent, a billionaire? Sure, why not. Forbes loves to make proclamations about celebrities’ worth and they willdy miss the mark most of the time. There’s no reporting in the piece. They just took Kylie’s word for it.

Now comes along Peterson-Withorn and Berg. You can only imagine that since the March 6, 2019 piece a lot of people in the cosmetics world have questioned the original story.  Rather than wait for someone else to reveal Kylie’s lies, and face embarrassment for allowing it all to happen, Forbes jumps into the fray with a proactive story: Inside Kylie Jenner’s Web of Lies. The story is NOT subtitled “How Kris Jenner Duped Us and We Allowed It.”

After assigning blame for the miscalculation of Kylie’s success to WWD (Womens Wear Daily) and anyone they can think of, th new writers conclude: “The business was never that big to begin with, and the Jenners have lied about it every year since 2016—including having their accountant draft tax returns with false numbers—to help juice Forbes’ estimates of Kylie’s earnings and net worth. While we can’t prove that those documents were fake (though it’s likely), it’s clear that Kylie’s camp has been lying.”

Really, no kidding. We could have told you that in the first place.

The writers sum it up: “Forbes has recalculated Kylie’s net worth and concluded that she is not a billionaire. A more realistic accounting of her personal fortune puts it at just under $900 million, despite the headlines surrounding the Coty deal that seemed to confirm her billionaire status. More than a third of that is the estimated $340 million in post-tax cash she would have pocketed from selling a majority of her company. The rest is made up of revised earnings based on her business’ smaller size and a more conservative estimate of its profitability, plus the value of her remaining share of Kylie Cosmetics—which is not only smaller than the Jenners led us to believe but is also worth less now than it was when the deal was announced in November, given the economic effects of the coronavirus.”

One thing is clear: chasing the Karsdashians to boost PR and circulation backfired for Forbes spectacularly.

As for the avaracious, attention seeking family of glamorous grifters: this news, plus their falling ratings on their idiotic TV show, point to maybe at long last an end to their run as supermarket tabloid stars trying to pass as substantial entities.

 

 

 

Roger Friedman
Roger Friedmanhttps://www.showbiz411.com
Roger Friedman began his Showbiz411 column in April 2009 after 10 years with Fox News, where he created the Fox411 column. His movie reviews are carried by Rotten Tomatoes, and he is a member of both the movie and TV branches of the Critics Choice Awards. His articles have appeared in dozens of publications over the years including New York Magazine, where he wrote the Intelligencer column in the mid 90s and covered the OJ Simpson trial, and Fox News (when it wasn't so crazy) where he covered Michael Jackson. He is also the writer and co-producer of "Only the Strong Survive," a selection of the Cannes, Sundance, and Telluride Film festivals, directed by DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus.
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