[anigbrowl]

It's not the sort of thing you should have to aprse in the first place. There's a narrow set of circumstances in which some family issues might be legitimate to discuss, eg if a journalist's spouse or other immediate relative was a senior officer or investor in a direct competitor - but then you could just say 'we think X is an unethical journalist because s/he has a major conflict of interest which biases articles s/he writes about our firm' because there's plenty of precedent for dealing with such issues in the world of financial journalism.

Vague talk of investigating 'your families' comes off more as an attempt to intimidate; arguably the vagueness is intended to provoke anxiety and worry to a greater degree than a specific allegation (as above) that could be refuted or debunked.