The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) organized protests in Maryland at the homes of several bank executives, along with follow-up rallies in Washington, D.C., at bank branches and offices.

The events went largely uncovered by the Washington Post, which led Post ombud Andrew Alexander (5/29/10) to wonder  why the paper missed a major labor story that was covered by Mother Jones (5/16/10) and the Nation (5/20/10), among others.

The story has been getting a lot of attention from right-wing activists, though, who are arguing that a protest outside a banker's home is an outrageous infringement on someone's private life. A more important point is whether the Post is paying attention to labor activism:

But Huffington Post reporter Arthur Delaney said he learned of the protests from SEIU sources, which raises the question of whether the [Washington] Post is sufficiently plugged into the nation's most politically active labor organization.

That's a good point.

Unfortunately, Alexander's thoughts about what coverage of union activism should look like is a little, well, anti-union:

There were numerous ways the Post could have gotten back in the game on the story. For example, how did Chevy Chase neighbors react? Did protesters break trespass laws? When does First Amendment expression infringe on residential privacy? Does President Obama, who enjoyed SEIU electoral support, sanction these types of protests? And is a blitz on private residences a new protest tactic?

I don't know--maybe a more important question than what Obama thinks of the protests might be, "What were they protesting?"

In his evaluation of the Dan Froomkin firing, Washington Post ombud Andy Alexander (6/26/09) confidently asserts that "first, it's not about ideology," then later asserts that Froomkin "was urged not to do media criticism." Clearly, though, the notion that the Post should not be subjected to criticism is a central tenet of the paper's ideology.

Alexander quoted with a straight face Post columnist Gene Weingarten questioning whether Froomkin "was as informed and qualified to opine as people who had been actively covering the White House for years." Alexander did not point out that Weingarten writes a humor column, which might have helped readers put into context an otherwise inexplicable claim.