Ariana Eunjung Cha

While the Washington Post's Beijing-based Ariana Eunjung Cha should be commended for her reporting on Beijing's restrictions on the exercise of religion by Olympic team chaplains, the paper's headline editors clearly dropped the ball in titling her August 14 headline: "Some Olympians Dissatisfied With Religious Center."

The casual reader might say, "so what," and breeze past the article. After all, any Olympic Games is bound to garner a host of logistics and aesthetics complaints from athletes, coaches, media, and tourists on a whole host of things. But the substance of the story is not so much on the subjective and sometimes picayune complaints of athletes and coaches but rather in the tightly-restricted manner in which the Communist Chinese government is providing for the spirital welfare of the Olympians.

For example, Cha reported that (emphasis mine):

Who says the Washington Post never reports the downsides of socialized medicine?

In a story below the fold on the June 23 Business section front page, staffers Kendra Marr and Ariana Eunjung Cha took a look at how a Bethesda, Md., company is setting out to make money by capitalizing on dissatisfaction with China's socialized medical system.

Marr and Cha look at how Bethesda-based Chindex International "is breaking into the heavily regulated Chinese health-care system by targeting the elite, who are willing to pay premium prices for premium care."

The Post staffers did try to put a bit of lipstick on the Communist medicine pig, but had to admit that the, um, efficiency of socialized medicine doesn't really provide that personal touch. You know, like private screening rooms: