PandoDaily editor Sarah Lacy was livid early Tuesday morning as she discussed a report that a senior Uber executive suggested his company hire a team to research and spread information about her personal life.
“Honestly, every woman using Uber should be scared,” she told Re/code. “Every journalist should be scared.”
Lacy also responded to Buzzfeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith’s scoop Monday night on PandoLIVE (and later on, in a blog post). She said that she was no stranger to threats, but saw Uber executive Emil Michael’s threat to disclose details of her personal life as an escalation of the tactics others in powerful positions have used to try to sideline PandoDaily’s work.
“They’re bragging that destroying a female journalist in a way their fingerprints would not be on it and her family, is what they should be doing. That’s what’s it’s okay to talk about and spend their investor money on,” she observed. “I just think this is a line in the sand for Silicon Valley.”
Michael would later apologize to Lacy on Twitter and by phone. During PandoLIVE, Lacy called for him to be dropped from the company and urged investors to hold Uber management accountable for the views Michael expressed.
“We live in a world where Donald Sterling had to sell an NBA team because of comments he made,” she said. “This is a company which entails personal safety in getting in the cars. How does this guy not lose his job?”
Uber did not respond to TPM’s request for comment on Michael’s status with the company as of Tuesday.
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