Uber is in hot water after a top executive threatened to investigate journalists who criticized the ride sharing company, Buzzfeed’s Ben Smith reported.
According to Smith, the Uber executive, Emil Michael said at an event in New York that Uber could spend about “a million dollars” to hire people to do opposition research on journalists and their families. The dug up information apparently would be fed to media outlets, and no one would know Uber’s role in the research, Michael said.
His remarks were particularly directed at Sarah Lacy, the editor of PandoDaily, who recently announced she would delete the Uber app after a report that Uber appeared to be working with a French escort service.
Michael said that taxi drivers are more likely to assault women than Uber drivers, Smith reported, and should any woman follow Lacy’s lead, use taxis and be assaulted by a taxi driver, Lacy should be held “personally responsible.”
Lacy wrote in response that the comments made her afraid.
Michael said the comments were supposed to be off the record and apologized to Lacy on Twitter:
I would like to apologize to you directly. My comments were wrong and I deeply regret them.
It was supposed to be a good month for Uber and its CEO Travis Kalanick.
The company announced a partnership with Spotify to allow passengers to stream their favorite music, as Patrick May wrote in Silicon Beat this week.
And Uber is reportedly in talks to raise about $1 billion more, bringing its valuation over its current $18 billion, as Heather Somerville reported in Silicon Beat.
Photo by Associated Press
