Polly Tommey and Brian Hooker, Ph.D., called out The Atlantic for what they described as a “very insensitive” article published today about the father, named Peter, of the 6-year-old West Texas girl who died after testing positive for measles.
“It’s devastating that somebody would go to this depth to get their story,” said Hooker, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) chief scientific officer, who has been in touch with the family of the child.
Atlantic writer Tom Bartlett “invaded” the viewing of this little girl who passed away, Hooker said during an interview with Tommey, CHD.TV program director, on an episode of “Good Morning, CHD.”
Hooker said:
“Evidently, the number of reporters that were trying to get to the family was so overwhelming that they had to call the sheriff’s office to barricade the entrance where the viewing was taking place. But somehow this individual got in.”
Tina Siemens, a Mennonite business owner and award-winning author, confirmed what Hooker said. She told The Defender that on the day of the viewing, “the father calls me in a panic. He says, ‘There’s media knocking while we are viewing our little girl for the first time.’”
Siemens immediately contacted the community’s local judge. “Can you please get our sheriff department, our police department, to go and make sure this family is left alone in this unimaginable grief time?”
The judge did.
The funeral home staff told Siemens, “Tina, we’ve got it taken care of. The father’s been given our personal number, and if there’s any media that’s going to cringe [sic] on their grief time, they will be restrained.”
Siemens also shared that she has been in touch with Hooker.
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In The Atlantic article, Bartlett describes meeting Peter in the parking lot of a church in Seminole, where the viewing was underway for Peter’s daughter. According to Bartlett, Peter “invited” him to “come inside the church building.”
Tommey described Bartlett’s article as “very insensitively written.”
“He talks about the viewing and looking at her little blonde hair [as she laid in the coffin] — and then he makes some nasty comment about one of her sisters coughing as if to say, ‘they’re all sick,’” she said.
“Then at the end of the article,” Tommey added, “he talks about going and getting an MMR [vaccine] just in case he catches it.”
Hooker agreed that the article was insensitive to the grieving family. He said:
“The report is not a report. It’s about 70% editorial and about 30% just twisting facts that they were able to surmise from Peter’s responses. Peter was obviously very distraught, very tight-lipped, and offered very little information.”
It was obvious that The Atlantic wanted “soundbites” from the father, Hooker said. “They didn’t really want the real story from him.”
“It was so threadbare — what was actually said by Peter, the father — and instead it was just big fat editorial for the Atlantic … If I were a family member, I’d be devastated by this article,” he said.
Watch here:
Related articles in The Defender
- Exclusive: Mennonite Community in Texas Is ‘Frustrated’ by Media Coverage of Measles Outbreak
- Exclusive: ‘Just Normal Doctoring’ — a Texas Doctor’s Eyewitness Report on Measles Outbreak
- Media Panic Over Measles Distracts From Real Threats to Kids’ Health and Safety
- Texas Reports Death of Child Who Tested Positive for Measles, But Releases Few Details
- MMR Vaccine Debate Heats Up as Media Claim ‘Vaccine Hesitancy’ to Blame for Recent Outbreaks
