Companies shouldn’t be spying on journalists

Steve Kovach of Business Insider writes that no company should spy on a journalist the way that Uber claimed it wanted to spy on tech journalist Sarah Lacy.

Kovach writes, “What’s the point of doing that to a journalist? A journalist writes a critical column about your company, and you do what? Publish on your company blog that he’s cheating on his wife? Or that she owes back taxes? What does that accomplish?

“Nothing. It’s going overboard, and in the end makes the company look petty and cruel.

“But there seems to be a segment of the tech industry that thinks journalists, despite writing everything publicly under their byline should be investigated like that.

“It’s not a question about whether or not a journalist has anything to hide, as Winer wrote. Most probably don’t. And anything worth knowing about them is easily available under their name with a quick Google search and a look through their archives of published articles.

“The same can’t be said about public figures in the tech industry.”