Shill Wanted

I have a job for Megan McArdle.

A senior executive at Uber suggested that the company should consider hiring a team of opposition researchers to dig up dirt on its critics in the media — and specifically to spread details of the personal life of a female journalist who has criticized the company.  

...  

Over dinner, he outlined the notion of spending “a million dollars” to hire four top opposition researchers and four journalists. That team could, he said, help Uber fight back against the press — they’d look into “your personal lives, your families,” and give the media a taste of its own medicine.  

Michael was particularly focused on one journalist, Sarah Lacy, the editor of the Silicon Valley website PandoDaily, a sometimes combative voice inside the industry. Lacy recently accused Uber of “sexism and misogyny.” She wrote that she was deleting her Uber app after BuzzFeed News reported that Uber appeared to be working with a French escort service. “I don’t know how many more signals we need that the company simply doesn’t respect us or prioritize our safety,” she wrote.  

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. 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.  

At the Waverly Inn dinner, it was suggested that a plan like the one Michael floated could become a problem for Uber.  

Michael responded: “Nobody would know it was us.”

McArdle has tons of experience writing articles in support of Uber and routinely ignored important criticism of it; they wouldn't even need to pay her to do the job. She is also very easy to deceive.  McArdle diligently types lots of words to undermine working men and women and print dirt on her "enemies;" she dutifully passed on dirt about Edmund Andrews' wife when he dared to show support for homeowner bailouts instead of supporting bank bailouts like she did.