Pando Daily’s Lacy: My responsibility is to readers

Bloomberg Television’s Emily Chang and Cory Johnson spoke with Sarah Lacy, the editor in chief of the tech news site Pando Daily, who was the tech reporter targeted by a Uber executive last week for possible investigation because of a negative article she wrote about the company.

Here is an excerpt of what Lacy said:

It’s more than that.  I first heard about this from Ben Smith and I feel like the story is really focused to me and Travis and Emil.

But let’s not forget, this was said at a table full of journalists.  Ariana Huffington, Michael Wolff, people from “Business Insider.”  One thought this was wrong.  One thought this was wrong and wrote a story under intense intimidation and that was Ben Smith of BuzzFeed.

And I mean, honestly, when he called me, I was on a business trip in London and I stepped out to talk to him, because I have enormous respect for him and I could not imagine what was so important that he needed to talk to me immediately.

And I was terrified.  And I — you know, the plan, as it was described, was not just to dig up dirt.  And we’re not talking about doing a Google source.  We’re talking about a million-dollar budget, a 4-6 staff team to do opposition research on me.  That’s going through trash.  That’s following my kids.  That’s vans parked outside my house.

And the idea was we are going to go at her through her family and we’re going to destroy her through her family and we are going to do it until she backs down and no one will ever know that Uber did this.

So and one journalist thought this was wrong.  So as soon as I heard this, I was terrified, but I also thought, God, thank God he said to a real journalist because otherwise they’d be doing it.  And I’d have no idea.

Later, Lacy said:

I don’t understand — I mean, look, we — you and I definitely came from the old world of journalism.  I don’t understand what’s happened with online media today where journalists are confused on where their loyalties lie.  And journalists think their loyalty lies to a rich guy that they are covering, who is going to lie to them or say something horrific and illegal that damages someone’s family security, off the record and that that trumps that responsibility to the reader — I want to be very clear to any source of mine listening to this.  My responsibility is to my readers.  It is to the users of these services.  It is not to you.  If you lie to me, if you confess to a crime to me off the record, it will become on the record

Watch the interview below: