The mass media have long been seen as an important mechanism in constructing and brokering relations between host and immigrant minorities. Their role has typically been portrayed as endorsing, if not, initiating racist imagery. New Zealand significantly altered its recruitment of immigrants in terms of source countries in 1986-87. The resulting superdiversity presents new challenges for the mainstream media. In the early phase of this recently enhanced cultural diversity, the mass media (here represented by the print media) contributed to a publically articulated racialisation. However, the growing engagement (embeddedness) of the media workers in the reality of this enhanced diversity was subsequently reflected in more nuanced and sympathetic reporting after 2000, thereby confounding classic approaches which stress the misrepresentation and underrepresentation of immigrants by the mass media. There remain important exceptions to this shift towards a broadly sympathetic representation of immigrants by the media; there is evidence of ongoing racist 'Othering' in news reporting and by particular journalists. This paper argues that there is evidence of a recent and partial transformation in the nature of media discourses concerning immigrants and immigration in New Zealand.