ABSTRACT
Alongside the more dominant tendencies towards negative representations of Muslims, we also see representations that are ambivalent, contradictory, and even positive about Muslims. Contestation about Muslims as the ‘Other’ does to some extent permeate through the more negative newspaper coverage, creating spaces for alternative representations and counter-narratives. In this chapter, I present the case that we should view representation through journalists’ experiences of the tensions between structure and agency set against a backdrop of political and cultural contestation about British Muslims. In doing so, we gain a much more nuanced, underexplored insight into both the reproduction of, and resistance to, anti-Muslim bias within newspapers. The chapter draws on the experiences of journalists with examples of how they were able to create spaces to resist and challenge the biases within the newspaper institutions they worked for. It further explores how contestation from outside the media – whether instigated by politicians, media campaign groups, Muslim organisations and even news audiences and publics themselves – can challenge British newspapers on how they report on stories involving Muslims.
