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One Black Texas father is grieving the loss of his whole world after catastrophic flash flooding occurred July 4th weekend. After telling a reporter how he lost his wife and son in a TV interview, what happened next made many viewers go from heartbroken to downright angry.
“Your son has been found? How’s he doing?” an unidentified reporter asks J.J. Jarmon, a flood survivor who lives near Big Sandy Creek, from behind the camera in a now viral TikTok. Jarmon somberly answered, “He is no longer.” The CBS Austin reporter repeated the man’s words– loaded with embarrassment– admitting how he “must’ve misunderstood you earlier. I’m so sorry.”
Jarmon began to tell the interviewer how his son, wife, and “daughter fell through the tracks of the plywood when it fell into the rill. It was one-by-one; Braxton went first—” before he was rudely interrupted. As he was talking, the reporter asked him how old his son was. If that wasn’t enough, he repeated Jarmon’s son’s name, “Braxton or…,” as he was seemingly confused on the pronunciation, prompting Jarmon to spell it out for him.
“I’m so sorry for your losses,” the interviewer continued, before asking what folks called the most redundant, and insensitive, question ever: “How are you feeling today?” The Black man took the out-of-line question in stride, answering how “he’s managing the past few days since this has happened.” He also mentioned how he has the support of his friends and how his mother plead the blood of Jesus over him.
The reporter’s questioning didn’t stop there. He asked Jarmon how old his daughter Felicity was and how his “anxiety” is “as a parent” since she’s still missing. “The anxiety of it is really crazy because I’m not really happy with the fact that she hasn’t been found. I’m happy for all the support, and I do understand there’s a lot of circumstances, debris,” Jarmon answered.
In an even more unbelievable twist, the reporter, stuttering, admits he “doesn’t want to ask an insensitive question,” but goes on to do just that. “As a parent still missing a child, is there any hope at all at this point?” The father confessed how he does not have hope “if she is alive. […] But from what I saw in here and what I lived through, I really don’t think so. There’s no way.”
Folks were up in ARMS about the “incredibly ignorant” reporter’s questions, and let him have it in the comments.
“What in the WORLD are these questions from the interviewer?!,” one person wrote.
Another added, “Whoever is interviewing needs to step back and leave that broken man alone.. tf? How do you think he’s feeling,” while a third person commented, “I am genuinely blown away by these questions from the interviewer.”
Other ruthless comments called the reporter “stupid,” asked, “Why are they interviewing survivors,” and writing how, “These questions are off. Where’s the sympathy for the guy who lost his whole family?”
Additional comments called for the reporter’s need for “a lesson in sympathy” because “people who are grieving still have not yet processed their own feelings.” One person wrote how that reporter should “NOT interview ANYONE ELSE.”
A handful of others didn’t quite agree, sharing how “it’s a journalists job to document history” and to “get first hand accounts.” Another defended the reporter, saying he was allowing the survivor a “chance to express his grief.”
Watch the full interview for yourself.
The Texas Hill Country was inundated with rain causing massive flooding early July 4. The Guadalupe River rose over 20 feet in less than 45 minutes, resulting in over 100 deaths and over 160 people still missing.
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