Your editorial missed the mark and lacked understanding of why there has been an outcry about this photo.
No, we are not sticking our heads in the sand and trying to ignore the gang situation in P.G. We can see what is happening in our city. What we are trying to convey to you is that we don't need a bloody photo splashed across your front page to drive the point home that there is gang violence in P.G.
Knowing that this happened on a summer afternoon in front of neighbours and children is horrifying and we can understand this without seeing a dead body lying on a street.
You say that "those children's eyes can't un-see that blood falling from that gunshot victim." Did you stop to think that by publishing that photo you would be exposing many more children to this terrible image?
On Monday morning, I walked to the end of my driveway and picked up the paper. As I looked at the photo, I was so incredibly thankful that I had not sent my eight-year-old son to get the paper as he often does. My children do not need to see this any more than the children that were playing on the street that Saturday afternoon.
We do not believe The Citizen is "behind the escalating violence in our town."
Being offended about the printing of this photo does not place blame on the newspaper for what happened.
We blame you for your insensitive, disrespectful and callous reporting of what happened. You did not do the right thing.
Don't kid yourselves.
Oh, one thing you are right about - you will lose readers - I am one of them.
By the way, printing a front page photo of two sweet little girls with a lemonade stand does nothing to atone for the image of yesterday's photo.
If anything, it creates a disgusting contrast.
What kind of paper are you anyway?
Frances Leboe,
Prince George
