The Uber Files
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 11 July 2022
⏱️ 37 minutes
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Summary
Today on Post Reports, we dig into the findings of an explosive new report about Uber, and reveal the human cost of Uber’s quest for rapid growth.
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The Uber Files is an international investigation into the ride-hailing company’s aggressive entrance into cities around the world — while frequently challenging the reach of existing laws and regulations. Documents illuminate how Uber used stealth technology to thwart regulators and law enforcement and how the company courted prominent political leaders, Russian oligarchs and media conglomerates as it sought footholds outside the United States.
The project is based on more than 124,000 emails, text messages, memos and other records that a former top lobbyist for Uber, Mark MacGann, provided to the Guardian. It shared the material with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which helped lead the project, and dozens of other news organizations, including The Washington Post. Journalists from 29 countries joined the effort to analyze the records over four months.
Today, reporter Doug MacMillan tells the behind-the-scenes story of the tactics Uber used as the company expanded rapidly, and the human cost for drivers.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The mantra that people repeated from one office to another was the mantra from the top. |
| 0:07.6 | So don't ask for permission. |
| 0:09.1 | Just launch, hustle, enlist drivers, go out, do the marketing, and quickly people will |
| 0:15.1 | wake up and see what a great thing Uber is. |
| 0:17.6 | That is Mark McGann. |
| 0:19.2 | He's a former executive at Uber. |
| 0:21.5 | McGann was the company's top lobbyist in Europe. |
| 0:24.6 | He came forward in a video interview with the Guardian published on Monday. |
| 0:28.1 | I was the one talking to governments. |
| 0:29.4 | I was the one pushing this with the media. |
| 0:31.3 | I was the one telling people that they should change the rules because drivers were going |
| 0:35.1 | to benefit and people were going to get so much economic opportunity. |
| 0:39.6 | That when that turned out not to be the case, we had actually sold people alive. |
| 0:46.2 | How can you have a clear conscience if you don't stand up and own your contribution |
| 0:51.3 | to how people have been treated today? |
| 0:56.5 | McGann has leaked tens of thousands of internal records from Uber. |
| 1:00.6 | They span from 2013 to 2017 when the company was growing fast. |
| 1:05.2 | And those documents are the basis of a new investigation called the Uber Files. |
| 1:09.6 | So the Uber Files are over 124,000 text conversations, emails, corporate presentations, |
| 1:19.0 | covering a very wide range of Uber's activities around the world. |
| 1:25.2 | Doug McMillan is a corporate accountability reporter for the post. |
| 1:28.5 | And he's part of a team of journalists in collaboration with the Guardian and ICIJ, |
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