(De)racializing “common sense”: media perspectives on adoption reform in England

Adoption of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic children has long been deeply controversial in the UK, with tensions over racial/ethnic matching and transracial adoption into white families respectively. Media organisations have been key participants in these struggles, as commentators but also campaigners, yet there has been negligible research into their framing of the issues. This article explores press coverage in five national newspapers (plus Sunday sister papers) of the coalition government’s adoption reform programme. In particular, it focuses on patterns of deracialization and racialization of debates as they relate to identities, family dynamics and wider social currents with respect to race and ethnicity. While in some senses adoption represents a complex and atypical case study, coverage nonetheless reveals a powerful combination, simultaneously downplaying the significance of race, while amplifying the threat posed by ethnic matching. Findings are discussed in relation to the concept of ‘moral panic’.