Stuart Cosgrove: Publication of photograph was not sensationalist

The photograph is one of the saddest and most infuriating images I’ve ever seen, one of those miscarriages of natural justice that has angered good people into action. The more you dwell on it, the more detail emerges that drags it away from the contested Mexican-American border to the everyday life we all live in.

There’s the wee girl’s blue canvas shoes with the faded red star logo that could easily have been bought in Asda, there’s the band of father’s underpants showing above his shorts and, most challenging of all, the rectangular bulge of the girl’s disposable nappy, clearly visible through her bright red shorts. How often did the father change her? How often did he wipe her clean, learning the basic rituals of familial love? This is infancy, head down in a clay-silted river, dead and never going home.

Reports say Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter, Valeria, drowned as they tried to cross the Rio Grande into the United States.

The image of a father and his daughter, both dead, has put the spotlight on Donald Trump's cruel attitude towards migrants

The father had taken the daughter over first and was returning for his 21-year-old wife when the toddler panicked and jumped into the river to follow her dad. Although he managed to catch her in the rapids, and improvise his T-shirt as a makeshift baby-sling, the unpredictable power of the water dragged them both to their death.

Surely this is a mother’s worst nightmare? Hold her in your mind for a moment, a mother who wanted nothing more than a better life, but had to watch her daughter’s death in helpless and pitiful fear. Who would want to walk in her scuffed and worn-down shoes?

The father and his daughter were laying face down in the silt, rushes and old branches framing their limp bodies, when the photograph was taken by Julia Le Duc, a digital reporter for La Jornada in Matamoros, the Mexican city across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas. It was to Brownsville that the migrants were heading on their ill-fated trek from El Salvador.

Julia Le Duc, or more likely her bosses at La Jornada, sold the photo and 10 related images to Associated Press, the not-for-profit giant of press agencies. From there, the image was circulated around the world, powered by social media.

It would be tempting to jump to conclusions and see it as a frenzied race to publish, but remarkable levels of care went into the decisions taken by Associated Press. According to the agency, “rather than rush to publish, we convened a video call on Tuesday evening with our senior leadership team to deliberate the best way to carefully and thoughtfully present the story in words and images as the photo spread, with scant context, across social media”.

A key character in the unfolding story was Manny Garcia, the standards editor for the USA Today network, a key recipient of the images and one of America’s biggest selling mid-market newspapers.

One of the challenges the publishers addressed head-on was that at first glance the gut-wrenching photograph of the dead bodies in the Rio Grande resembled crime scene photos: two bodies, photographed from different angles, and crime scene tape which had been hurriedly pulled together by law enforcement officers.

The editors agreed that anything released to social media had to be rooted in context, soberly written and linked back to deeper journalism. Anything that might seem sensational or, worse still, appear to be crass click-bait was ruled out and a digital team was put on standby to monitor reader reactions online in real time.

THE BBC gained early access to the images too and once again put in place an editorial policy that reflected the sensitivity of what viewers might see, over and above the now familiar warnings. The BBC News Channel made another in-vision decision: throughout the afternoon schedule during Simon McCoy’s Afternoon Live segment, the photo was never to be shown blown up on the in-studio video screens. A careful respect surrounded every mention of the story.

As is often the case with coincidence, the photograph was breaking news at around the same time as the executive producer of The Jeremy Kyle Show Tom McLennan gave car-crash testimony to the House of Commons Culture Select Committee, where he admitted the polygraphs used during the show were “not 100% accurate”, and that he did not know how reliable they were.

The contrasts of care and concern could not have been more stark – one seeking to protect the viewer, the other casually unconcerned.

Although an intriguing side-show, the media’s concern was never likely to dominate the debate for long. Focus inevitably fell on Donald Trump’s sclerotic presidency, where his obsession with the Mexican border and his ruthless attitudes to the plight of migrants, especially children, is overwhelming his term in office.

The photograph of the bodies clinging together in desperate love has sparked fresh outrage over the treatment of migrants on America’s southern frontier. Trump is on the back foot and no crude appeals to the zealots in his core support could distract from the sheer pathos of the deaths.

When it came to words from a president, the most telling came from the charismatic Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele, who said: “Someday we will finish building a country where migration is an option and not an obligation. Meanwhile, we will do as much as we can. God help us.” Bukele volunteered that his government would cover “all repatriation expenses and will help the family financially”.

The deaths provoked anger across America, from protesters to politicians. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi told the Associated Press: “This is a manifestation of behaviour that is outside the circle of civilised human behaviour.”

She said the US is ignoring its “obligations to humanity”, and she hoped that it will show that “something could be done that is better”.

It was a relatively good week for serious journalism and none more so than that from the Irish Times Washington correspondent Suzanne Lynch, who travelled south not to the remote spot where the deaths occurred but to Homestead, Florida, an hour’s drive south of Miami where one of Trump’s controversial migrant camps is based.

Homestead is the largest child detention facility in the US and is picketed every day by protesters from the “Shut It Down” movement, a local campaign which attracts more than 100 protesters daily. Although the centre was established during the Obama presidency, it has now become synonymous with Trump and his more aggressive attitude to illegal immigrants and his policy of separating families at the border. A similar camp in Texas has also provoked public outcry after first-hand evidence of caged toddlers with no access to washing facilities, toothbrushes and nappies outraged middle America.

Centres like Homestead and the emotional power of a single image of a dead father and his baby daughter have driven the United States immigration system to a point of crisis. Yes, they died in vain, but their death will resonate for years to come, and may yet nudge America into reeling in their populist president.