This news is from March 16 but I did not want to publish it until all the facts of what happened were known so as not to skew the information. Newspapers and media cannot take the liberty of waiting until they have all the data, however, and there goes my criticism, they can be prudent when making certain claims.
A two-month-old baby died while taking a nap with his parents. Apparently they all lay together in bed as they had been doing since he was born and when they woke up they realized that he was not breathing.
They went to the Clinical Hospital where doctors, who could not do anything for the baby, told 091 to investigate the event. According to official police statements the baby could have died "By accident or recklessness".
The first hypothesis pointed out that it could be due to a case of crushing or suffocation on the part of the parents waiting for the autopsy results to confirm it.
The autopsy revealed, in news of the following day, that the death was due to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SMSL), that is, neither died asphyxiated, nor died crushed.
However, the media held on to the previous hypothesis stating that a baby had died from suffocation by adding, some of them, fallacies that accompanied the statement.
Let's see which headlines used the newspapers to talk about the news:
- The provinces: "A two-month-old baby dies when crushed while sleeping with his parents in Valencia." This was the original headline, which at some point during these days has been replaced by “The Police investigates the causes of the death of the two-month-old baby in Valencia, who could die by accident”, just look at the information on the window offered by the internet browser that we use to see the original headline.
- 20 minutes: "They investigate whether a two-month-old baby was crushed by his parents by accident." This newspaper leaves the subject open and assumes that at the moment they can only offer the official hypothesis.
- The world: "They investigate the death of the 2-month-old baby their parents crushed." Neither hypothesis nor mandangas, they investigate it, but I don't know why, because they already know that they crushed it. In fact, in the writing of the news we can read “The baby was crushed by one of his parents while he slept in bed with his parents”, thus, words of the journalist in plan I make it up "because I'm worth it".
- El País: "The Police investigate the death of a baby." For me the most concise, the least sensationalist and the one who treats the news from the respect for the tragic event. At no time do they talk about crushing.
- Diario de León: "Parents suffocate their baby by accident when they take a nap." In the line of the editors of the world. The hypothesis becomes real fact even in the news: "Some parents accidentally suffocated their two-month-old son on Sunday while they took a nap at home ...", in the following paragraph they drop that the hypothesis needs to be confirmed, but the statement They have already released her.
- La Voz de Galicia: “A couple suffocates their baby without realizing it during a nap”. He also takes the hypothesis for granted and unleashes his imagination with an "apparently one of them turned while he slept crushing the boy, who was lying in the middle of the bed."
As you can see many newspapers cling to what they can to make the headline as surprising and sensational as possible and it bothers me greatly that they make use of such strategies when the news is related to the death of a baby and when the choice of what headline causes the guilty of the parents (without any fault).
This news has made all the parents we collect stay in the expectation of seeing what the result of the autopsy was and to have more information about the news. First to know why, if it was a suffocation, and second to defend our position in case someone used the news as an argument.
Colecho is a widespread practice in the world, which is safe if certain rules and recommendations are followed and that becomes dangerous if they are ignored.
If the asphyxiation hypothesis has been confirmed, it should be assessed under what conditions the parents slept with their baby to avoid hasty conclusions of the type “the colecho is dangerous per se”.
These types of statements are what the parents we collect have feared after reading the news. I don't know if it has happened to other people, but it has happened to me. I take the liberty to explain it in case anyone is interested.
Just yesterday, a co-worker with whom I have often discussed the colecho (without ever approaching positions) used the news as an argument against the colecho.
There was no problem, because I already knew that the autopsy dictated a sudden death (data that she did not know), but I found it disrespectful on her part because I did not argue my defense of the school with news of babies who die in their cribs, that there are .
Moreover, I have a fabulous argument that has never failed me: "The colecho is wonderful, because everyone likes us in my house."
