Despite having covered immigration and the Dubs amendment endlessly, papers fail to note this week’s shift in policy

Those British tabloids most outraged by the issue of immigration barely noted the government’s decision to limit sanctuary for lone child refugees to just a few hundred, rather than the thousands hoped for by campaigners.

The Daily Mail put its story headlined “Child refugee scheme for 3,000 halted at just 350” at the bottom of page 6, while the Sun found space for just five paragraphs and the Express had nothing at all.

Such apparent lack of interest comes despite the fact that the issue of child refugees marks a possible high-water mark for the media’s impact on both public opinion and government policy.

It was a leader in the Mail last April offering surprise support that helped Labour peer Alf Dubs gain support for his landmark amendment promising sanctuary for unaccompanied child refugees in the first place.

The piece, in which the Mail leader backed then prime minister David Cameron, possibly for the last time, was headlined “The Mail has always been robust on migration but we MUST give these lost children sanctuary” and talked of the UK’s “moral and humanitarian duty”.

It prompted Dubs, who was brought to Britain as part of the Kindertransport scheme in 1939, to buy a copy of the paper “for the first time”.

That changed dramatically in October, when unaccompanied migrants arriving in Croydon was reported in the Sun under the headline “Are you kidding? Calais ‘children’ arrive in UK”. Edited by former Mail executive Tony Gallagher, the paper published three headshots of refugees on its front page and questioned if they were really under 18. Similar Mail and Express front-page stories followed – and public opinion changed again.

Google “child refugees” today and “are adults” is the third most popular term after the less loaded “stories” and “in Calais”.

Google screenshot. Photograph: Google

The pictures sparked a debate about puberty and whether hardship makes people look older, rather than a debate about the ethics of taking and publishing pictures of minors.

The editors’ code of practice states: “Children under 16 must not be interviewed or photographed on issues involving their own or another child’s welfare unless a custodial parent or similarly responsible adult consents.”

A Sun executive, pleased at having set the agenda, said he would not be able to publish pictures of far younger refugees because of this rule.

Fears over the safety of these children means that all reports on the issue take care not to identify young people, who often have no one to speak for them.

In many ways the pictures of the young refugees last October marked a return to the norm for British papers. Research for the UNHRC by Cardiff University found that all other EU newspapers were more likely to stress humanitarian issues in migration stories than the British press, which tended to focus primarily on the economic impact.

The research was carried out in 2014 and early 2015, before the tiny lifeless body of Alan Kurdi was found on a beach in Turkey in September 2015. Pictures of the rescuer carrying the child provoked international sympathy when used by the media and an increase in support for refugees in opinion polls.

But it did not last. The support of titles like the Mail soon waned, as last April’s editorial showed. Its leader included a line urging the then prime minister to be cautious: “The pressures of our relentless population growth mean we cannot afford to make more than a gesture – accepting perhaps a few hundred of the most vulnerable lone children from the camps of Calais and Dunkirk.”

Evidence if ever it was needed of how the Mail’s editorial line can become government policy.