LA Weekly calls out Uber PR team for ‘trying to dupe us’
The startup recently taught PR pros a valuable lesson in ethics: Trust diminishes quickly if you’re not upfront and transparent.
For a quick lesson in PR ethics, turn to Uber. The company recently tried to pull a fast one on LA Weekly. It didn’t work.
The story goes like this:
On Monday, LA Weekly published a first-person essay that criticized Uber’s driver service. One day later, the publication received an email from one “Tawny Valentine” with a first-person account of an Uber driver titled, “Confessions of a former L.A. Taxi Driver.” The piece was written by Cabdi Xuseen (who is, indeed, a real person).
An LA Weekly staffer emailed Valentine. That’s when things started to unravel for the Uber PR team. From LA Weekly:
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