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The article demonstrates how the discursive strategies of sport reporting by the media may collide with the vision of sport as a means of promoting intercultural understanding, a generally anticipated cultural effect of mega sport events. This is done by a critical discourse reading of 35 news articles that appeared across the British national press in May and June 2012, directly before the opening of the 14 th UEFA European Football Championship (Euro 2012) jointly hosted by Poland and Ukraine. Influenced by a BBC television documentary and linked by the central topic of the two countries as strongholds of racism, xenophobia and vicious hooliganism, these articles constitute an instance of a moral panic. A discussion of the panic as a mode of discourse leads to the conclusion that the priorities and practices of British newspaper journalism acted against the culturally integrating potential of Euro 2012.

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Researchers in contemporary and historical cultural studies have discovered the obituary genre as a valuable source of evidence on a number of levels. Over the last 15 years, some have examined death notices as cultural representations of gender; 1 others have approached them as instruments of shaping collective/group memory. 2 Obituaries have been critically investigated for specific cultural meanings and values: death, grief, virtue, work, and wealth. 3 American cultural history has also benefited from the study of obituaries in a multitude of media forms; yet such works are few in general and virtually nonexistent for the American colonial period. The earliest obituary included by Gary L. Long in his study of the relationship between personal identities and social structure comes from the year 1856. 4 Janice Hume, who wrote more generally about obituaries as reflection of changes in American culture, placed the lower time limit of her sample in the year 1818. 5 The present foray into the world of obituaries, death notices and announcements in an American colonial newspaper has been inspired by the fine results