“We debated it, but ultimately we chose to run a powerful version of this photo because it brings home the enormity of this tragedy,” said Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times.

The more jarring images appeared, though, in two major American dailies, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post. The Globe and Mail, Canada’s largest national newspaper, also published a close-up image.

Kim Murphy, the assistant managing editor of The Los Angeles Times for foreign and national news, said there had been a consensus among the paper’s senior editors to show the boy as he was discovered, face down on the beach.

“The image is not offensive, it is not gory, it is not tasteless — it is merely heartbreaking, and stark testimony of an unfolding human tragedy that is playing out in Syria, Turkey and Europe, often unwitnessed,” she said. “We have written stories about hundreds of migrants dead in capsized boats, sweltering trucks, lonely rail lines, but it took a tiny boy on a beach to really bring it home to those readers who may not yet have grasped the magnitude of the migrant crisis.”