<a href=”http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ombudsman-blog/2009/11/amid_tragic_flu_death_readers.html“>The ombudsman of the <a href=”http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ombudsman-blog/2009/11/amid_tragic_flu_death_readers.html“>Washington Post has a post up today on the fallout from Sunday’s front-page story on the tragic death of a reportedly healthy six-year-old girl in Virginia from the swine flu. The fallout being that the story was accompanied by a picture of the little girl’s mother smoking a cigarette. An excerpt from the ombudsman’s piece:

Post reporter Brigid Schulte, who wrote the story, said she was soon “flooded” with e-mails. Many expressed compassion and asked how they might help Wilson, who is out of work and cannot afford an urn for her daughter’s remains.
But many others – in e-mails to Schulte, to me and in online comments — wondered about the smoking and whether The Post had cast Wilson in an unfair light.
One reader who called me accused The Post of intentionally choosing an unflattering photo of Wilson to make her look like “trailer trash.”
Lori Flanagan, who lives in the small Fauquier County community of Broad Run, noted the flu-related respiratory complications in Heaven’s death and wondered if “preexisting conditions” might have been a cause. “In the photo of Heaven’s mom, who [as the last paragraph of the story noted] is currently pregnant, we see she is smoking a cigarette in the house,” Flanagan e-mailed. “A young child living in the house of a woman who smokes is dead of a lung problem and it’s a mystery?!!!”
Beverly Beuster, a mother of two who lives in Fairfax City, also wondered about whether Heaven was affected by smoke. “I doubt that (a child) who lives with secondhand smoke could be considered entirely healthy,” she wrote in an e-mail.
Schulte’s story focused heavily on the terrifying nature of the current strain of H1N1 flu, which is especially affecting the very young. She wrote that “it is the seemingly random deaths of healthy, young people such as Heaven that are driving much of the fear around swine flu.” Some readers wondered why the story didn’t explore whether cigarette smoke might have contributed to Heaven’s death.
Schulte explained that she didn’t know Wilson smoked until she met her for the first time on the Thursday, Nov. 19. The deadline for her story was the following day, making it difficult to explore the issue in depth with doctors. And besides, they had given no indication that secondhand smoke might be a contributing factor as they struggled for two weeks to keep Heaven alive before the decision was made to disconnect her respirator. She died minutes later.

Two things are going on here. One, secondhand smoke can be a contributing factor. Ten seconds of Googling can tell you that. Two, when is the MSM going to start asking such tough questions regarding the deaths of these reportedly healthy individuals?