Continued The Correspondent
Emerson Franke, Editor in Chief
The Baltimore Sun
TO: The Editor in Chief of the Baltimore Sun
FROM: Sybil Stone Van Antwerp, reader and subscriber for more than forty years
DATE: June 10, 2013
Dear Sir or Madam (with a name like Emerson, one can’t know which):
SHAME ON YOU. I am writing in regards to the article printed on page 2 of the Life section this morning, June 10, 2013, regarding the death of the young girl in Timonium.
It was a disgusting, unfeeling blip that should not have been put in a newspaper at all.
What good does it do to print a thing like that, for the gawking of strangers and for the humiliation of that girl’s poor father, who is no doubt already nearly killing himself with guilt?
Children die regularly—a terrific unfairness—and you don’t advertise that.
But a man backs over his child with a vehicle—now that’s newsworthy…
. I SPIT upon the unfeeling soul who wrote it.
I am repulsed. As if one family’s horror is some kind of spectacle the rest of us have right to observe.
Let the family print an obituary for the poor child if it’s what they choose, but to print a thing like that.
To make shark bait of someone’s life. Have you no soul within your cold chest?
You are clearly not a parent, or if you say the printing was an oversight, then even more shame heaped upon your miserable self for this careless treatment of your post. I have it in mind to cancel my subscription.
I know you won’t print this, but I hope you read it and I hope it inspires for you, even for the briefest moment, a measure of self-reflection.