Forbes mix-up: a timely reminder for new media

A lesson on how the global modern media can sometimes foul up... Indian websites today have been falling over themselves to report the news that Hu Jintao, the president of China, has replaced US President Barack Obama at the top of the Forbes power list.
 
The story appeared on numerous sites in India on the same day as Forbes released its list of the world's richest people - with Carlos Slim Helu, the Mexican mobile phone entrepreneur, once again coming top of the pile.
 
But while the rest of the world focused on the Forbes wealth chart, the Indian media was alone in reporting the news about the really quite significant shift in global power from America to China.The Times of India got the ball rolling this morning, announcing that Jintao was now the world's most powerful person, and that Sonia Gandhi, the president of the Indian National Congress party, had come ninth in the poll. It noted that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was ranked 18th.•In pictures: the Forbes rich list The story was quickly picked up by other Indian sites including India Business Blog, Indian Express, MSN India - who ran a picture essay - and the Bharat Chronicle, all of whom were anxious not to miss out on such a good story.
 
None of the sites appeared to notice that nobody else in the world was reporting the news. This was because the power list was actually published by Forbes four months ago, on November 3, 2010.

All Forbes stories are dated using the American formulation of month first, then day and year – so that November report was dated 11/03/10. It seems the Times of India mistakenly read that as March 10, 2011, and posted the story assuming it was fresh today. Their competitors then jumped on it too.

Just to make things even more embarrassing for the Times of India, the paper had actually covered the story about Jintao, Obama and Gandhi when it first came out last November. ·