Antiracism in the British government's model regional newspaper: the `talking cure'

Abstract

The Leicester Mercury has been identified as a model newspaper by the British government because it has been seen as central in communicating positive representations of ethnic minorities in the city of Leicester, and to play a role in avoiding the rioting experienced by many British cities with large ethnic minority populations. However, critical discourse and social actor analyses reveal that representations in the newspaper largely conceal the real structural reasons for the absence of rioting, instead addressing multiculturalism and antiracism through discourses of abstracted `talking' and `sharing' — a `talking cure'. This is more in harmony with the ideology of an advertiser-driven commercial newspaper, buzz of local commerce and the new definition of our cities-as-brands.