Daniel A Bell, "Is China Facing a Health Care Crisis?" New York Times, 11/1/11

Although health care reform is a common headliner in the U.S., it is rarely associated with religious influences. Most media discussions on health care do not include commentary on the Christian values held by the majority. This article, a U.S. based publication, is centered around the Chinese system of health care. In doing so, Bell subtly characterizes the inherent differences between the Chinese and American economic systems. Further, he eludes to the more religiously relevant philosophies held by each world hegemony. He interjects his discussion with the role of filial piety, a commonly held view of Confucianism, without fully defining the term to his audience. This seems to be an underlying difficulty involved in religion in the media -discussions might be encompassing but education on 'foreign' religion concepts tends to be lacking. What Bell does appropriately, though, is provide a sturdy foundation for the 'foreign' term filial piety. Unfortunately, usually even this baseline for an educative perspective gets clouded by opinions, biases or judgements by reporters. Any educative perspective provided by Bell then becomes one of vague exposure to religious concepts. Although this is not ideal, it will allow for recognition of terminology in future exposures. In this way, as readers scan for headlines that are familiar to them (ie. health care) they will become conditioned to some religious concepts, yielding a gradual comfort/education with the topics.