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Emil Michael is responsible for many high-profile business partnerships struck by Uber, the popular ride-hailing start-up, and he has engineered some of the company’s publicity stunts.

Now he is making news for another reason.

On Monday evening, BuzzFeed News reported that Mr. Michael, Uber’s senior vice president for business, detailed a plan to “hire four top opposition researchers and four journalists” to act as a sort of defense against what he saw as a wave of recent antagonistic press coverage.

The incident put a renewed focus on Uber’s confrontational attitude toward the press, a reputation that has grown in the last few years. The company’s fast growth — it is now valued at more than $17 billion — has attracted aggressive coverage in the tech media, often leading to equally aggressive responses from the company.

In recent months, though, the company has tried to repair its tarnished image by courting national media outlets. Those efforts could be derailed by Mr. Michael’s comments.

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The comments, BuzzFeed said, came during a private dinner in New York last week and focused on one journalist in particular, Sarah Lacy, who runs the technology site Pando. Ms. Lacy has been an outspoken critic of Uber and of Travis Kalanick, the company’s chief executive.

Shortly after the article appeared, Mr. Michael backed away from the comments.

“The remarks attributed to me at a private dinner — borne out of frustration during an informal debate over what I feel is sensationalistic media coverage of the company I am proud to work for — do not reflect my actual views and have no relation to the company’s views or approach,” Mr. Michael said in a statement. “They were wrong no matter the circumstance and I regret them.” Uber has said that the private dinner was supposed to be considered an off-the-record affair.

Nairi Hourdajian, an Uber spokeswoman, said: “We have not, do not and will not investigate journalists. Those remarks have no basis in the reality of our approach.”

The article from BuzzFeed, written by Ben Smith, the site’s editor in chief, said the plan Mr. Michael outlined could, in Mr. Michael’s words, “help Uber fight back against the press.” The researchers, he said, would look into “your personal lives, your families” — referring to journalists — and give the media a taste of its own medicine.

The BuzzFeed article also reports that Uber had gained access to the personal Uber travel data of Johana Bhuiyan, a BuzzFeed reporter, while she was working on an article about the company. In a blog post on Tuesday meant to clarify its privacy policy, Uber said it has strict policies against looking at the personal travel data of people, including journalists, who use the service.

On Tuesday, Mr. Kalanick issued a public apology in a series of tweets.

1/ Emil’s comments at the recent dinner party were terrible and do not represent the company. — travis kalanick (@travisk) 18 Nov 14

2/ His remarks showed a lack of leadership, a lack of humanity, and a departure from our values and ideals — travis kalanick (@travisk) 18 Nov 14

But the chief executive stopped short of asking for Mr. Michael’s resignation.

12/ I believe that folks who make mistakes can learn from them – myself included. — travis kalanick (@travisk) 18 Nov 14

Mr. Michael, who has worked at Uber since September 2013, is responsible for piecing together business partnerships; he has brokered deals with automakers like General Motors and Toyota to secure better rates for Uber drivers who want to purchase vehicles.

He has also put together some of Uber’s publicity stunts, such as using Uber’s service to deliver kittens for customers to play with, according to an interview Mr. Michael gave to Fast Company this year.

Before Uber, Mr. Michael worked as chief operating officer for Klout, a social media company, and has served as an assistant to the secretary of defense, according to his LinkedIn profile.

In August, he was also appointed as an adviser to the Defense Business Board, a group that advises the Pentagon on best business practices that might be applied to the Defense Department. After the report about Mr. Michael’s comments, the Pentagon distanced itself from the controversy.

“We do not associate ourselves with the comments Mr. Michael made or the views they represent,” Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, told BuzzFeed. “We note that he has expressed his regret over making them.”

Tech companies have gone on the offensive against journalists before. In 2006, for example, it was discovered that Hewlett-Packard, the Silicon Valley hardware giant, had spied on the phone records of nine journalists, including a reporter for The New York Times.

Ms. Lacy, who was said to be the main target of Mr. Michael’s comments, has been a dogged critic of Mr. Kalanick and his company. She has written scores of articles detailing what she calls Uber’s history of sexism and misogyny. She has deleted Uber’s application from her phone, and has publicly called for others to do so.

Ms. Lacy responded on Monday with an article on her site.

“Companies shouldn’t be allowed to go to illegal lengths to defame and silence reporters,” she said. “Professional women in this industry actually deserve respect.”

The statements come at a particularly difficult time for Uber, which has faced criticism for its cutthroat tactics toward competitors like Lyft, another ride-hailing company. Uber’s founder, Mr. Kalanick, has also had his character questioned in recent press reports.

Still, Uber has grown at a breakneck pace over the last five years; it has raised more than $1.5 billion in venture capital, and it is looking to raise at least another billion dollars from private investors in the future, according to people close to the company.