The colour-line of journalism: Exploring racism as a boundary object in journalistic practice and principles

This article argues that Danish journalistic boundary producing practices and principles uphold a representation of racial disparity. Based on critical theories of race and racism in journalism and a boundary work framework, we conduct a discursive analysis of two collective case studies, that combined encompass 56 articles and 23 facebook posts. Focusing particularly on 1. the construction of knowledge about potential racism, 2. who are positioned as authorities on the topic of racism, and 3. who are missing among the potential actors in the stories, we identify meta-journalistic discourses and the (re)establishment of journalistic principles and practices. We conclude that journalistic norms and practices for now withstand the challenges posed by minority media’s call for the recognition of race as structure by applying discursive strategies of firstly rejecting racism as structure and secondly asserting principles and practices of specific kinds of objectivity, utilising, for instance, elite sources.