Uber executive apologises after suggesting the firm dig dirt on hostile journalists

Luxury cab firm Uber has been forced to apologise after a senior executive suggested the company hire a team of opposition researchers to dig up dirt on hostile journalists.

Speaking at a dinner in Manhattan hosted by the Uber consultant and political “fixer” Ian Osborne, the company’s head of business, Emil Michael, singled out Sarah Lacy, the editor of tech news site PandoDaily, as somebody who could be targeted by the researchers.

Ben Smith, the editor of Buzzfeed, reported the comments after he was invited to the dinner by the media columnist Michael Wolff. He writes that Uber’s Michael was particularly incensed by an article in which Lacy accused Uber of “sexism and misogyny” after the firm was reported to be working with a French escort service.

“At the dinner, Michael expressed outrage at Lacy’s column and said that women are far more likely to get assaulted by taxi drivers than Uber drivers,” says Smith. “He said that he thought Lacy should be held ‘personally responsible’ for any woman who followed her lead in deleting Uber and was then sexually assaulted.

“Then he returned to the opposition research plan. Uber’s dirt-diggers, Michael said, could expose Lacy. They could, in particular, prove a particular and very specific claim about her personal life.”

Michael has since released a statement saying that he believed the dinner was off the record, and that the remarks “attributed to me… - borne out of frustration during an informal debate over what I feel is sensationalistic media coverage of the company I am proud to work for - do not reflect my actual views and have no relation to the company’s views or approach.

“They were wrong no matter the circumstance and I regret them.”

While Lacy has long been a critic of Uber, she says that Michael’s comments demonstrate that “the company still has the ability to shock and horrify me”.

“Uber’s dangerous escalation of behavior has just had its whistleblower moment, and tellingly, the whistleblower wasn’t a staffer with a conscience, it was an executive boasting about the proposed plan,” she adds.

“And lest you think this was just a rogue actor and not part of the company’s game plan, let me remind you Kalanick telegraphed exactly this sort of thing when he sat on stage at the Code Conference last spring and said he was hiring political operatives whose job would be to ‘throw mud’. I naively thought he just meant taxi companies.

“Let me also remind you: This is a company you trust with your personal safety every single time you use it. Let me also remind you: The executive in question has not been fired.”