Abdullah Kurdi, father of Aylan. Mehmet Can Meral/AP.jpgFor most media across Europe and North America the migration story this week moved from being a political game of numbers to a compelling drama in which empathy and compassion dominated the headlines.
The painful scenes of desperation in Budapest central railway station and, most striking of all, the image of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi, a drowned Syrian refugee child lying face down on a Turkish beach stirred media and journalism across the globe.
This turn of events took many media by surprise, after all for the last year there have been many vivid and explicit images of the suffering of migrants and refugees risking their lives in dangerous sea crossings, often at the mercy of brutal and cynical people traffickers.
