Ylan Q. Mui

A new economic report from the Federal Reserve doesn't offer much hope. On the front page of The Washington Post,  Ylan Q. Mui underlined "the Federal Reserve said the median net worth of families plunged by 39 percent in just three years, from $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010. That puts Americans roughly on par with where they were in 1992."   

Furthermore, "the data represent[s] one of the most detailed looks at how the economic downturn altered the landscape of family finance. Over a span of three years, Americans watched progress that took almost a generation to accumulate evaporate. The promise of retirement built on the inevitable rise of the stock market proved illusory for most. Homeownership, once heralded as a pathway to wealth, became an albatross."  What's more interesting is that Mui's article doesn't mention Obama once  -- in a front page piece during an election year -- right after he told reporters the private sector is "doing fine."

• Ran 11 articles related to D.C.'s new law allowing same-sex marriage.
• Devoted 543 inches of column space to the ruling - equal to nearly four full pages.
• Printed 14 photos of gay celebrations, including a prominent one of two men kissing.
• Quoted supporters 11 times more often than opponents - 67 to 6.
• Repeatedly compared gay marriage to the historic civil rights movement. 

Nobody can accuse The Washington Post of being objective when it came to covering the District of Columbia's decision to legalize same-sex marriage. The Post has reported on the event with a celebratory zeal more appropriate to The Advocate or The Blade.

It's a cute theory and maybe it deserves brief (pardon the pun) coverage in some other section of the paper, but the front page of the Monday Washington Post?

Readers of the August 31 edition were greeted by a 17-paragraph below-the-fold front page story by business writer Ylan Q. Mui about "What Underwear Says About the Economy."

Mui explains:

Hyping how "Whole Foods devotees"  are "lash[ing] out" at CEO John Mackey, Washington Post's Ylan Q. Mui paid particular attention to one "Mark Rosenthal, a playwright living in Massachusetts who founded the Boycott Whole Foods group a few days ago." At time of publication, Rosenthal's group had "nearly 14,000 members." Mackey, you may recall, penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed laying out his market-based ideas for health care reform.

Since then the group has jumped to 16,000+ members, or just 1/7th of the 113,444 "fans" of Whole Foods on Facebook. The grocery chain also has 1.2 million followers on Twitter compared to 247 followers of a Twitter page devoted to the Whole Foods boycott.

Even so, Mui failed to provide readers of her 19-paragraph story with a single shopper who agreed with Mackey or one who didn't but thought a boycott ludicrous, something that could easily be done by chatting with a shopper at one of the numerous stores the chain has in the Washington, D.C. area. Indeed, in an August 17 story, Washington, D.C. ABC affiliate WJLA found some Whole Foods shoppers who shrugged off the leftist boycott: