(Washington Post) – Some critics and physicians said Elizabeth Bruenig’s second-person account of a mother confronting a child’s death from measles felt misleading once they learned the story was reported fiction.

Bruenig’s stirring account of a mother’s experience learning her child will die of the long-term effects of measles has remained one of the Atlantic’s most read stories since it was published Thursday, receiving more than 700 comments. Some readers have called the essay, written in the second person, a visceral and gut-wrenching exposéof the human impacts of the measles epidemic.

It has also generated controversy. Readers and media experts have condemned the story as breaching journalistic ethics by informing the reader that the story is fictionalized through a short editor’s note at the end of the 3,000-word essay. Some public health experts argued the story was a dangerous writing exercise that could evoke backlash and confusion as vaccine skepticism hits an all-time high across the country. (Read More)