Most people would frown upon a business journalist lobbying the mayor of New York City over a political issue on behalf of a corporation she covers. CNBC’s Amanda Drury doesn’t see the big deal.

Uber is currently conducting an astroturf campaign to combat Mayor De Blasio’s attempts at regulating the vampiric amoral transit firm. Earlier today, every Uber customer in New York received an email explaining why Uber is good for the economy and American way of life, and why capping the company’s ability to chauffeur people around will likely lead to some sort of economic crisis (I’m not really sure, I didn’t read the whole email).

Financial and transit policy wonks like Ashton Kutcher and Kate Upton are already shilling for Uber:

And now, CNBC’s Drury is too:

It’s hard to imagine how one could get away with something so brazenly gross—try to imagine a journalist tweeting against Mayor Bloomberg’s soda ban with a special message brought to you by Pepsi®.

The only thing more egregious than Drury turning her Twitter account into Uber informercial is the fact that she’s not even creating her own ads—the tweet was almost certainly randomly generated through a link included in today’s promo email:

Clicking that “Tweet at Mayor de Blasio” button launches Twitter, and automatically suggests a pre-written message like this:

Drury, it would appear, is literally just spreading Uber’s copy and pasted public relations bullshit.

Actually, this explanation of why her shilling is acceptable is the most egregious thing:

Good stuff, great stuff.


Contact the author at biddle@gawker.com.
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