A cartoon showing Serena Williams amid a temper tantrum was not racist, a media watchdog group ruled.
The cartoon was published by the Herald Sun after Williams lashed out following her loss in the U.S. Open final in September 2018.
Williams, the most famous female tennis player in American history and a worldwide icon, incurred a penalty for an alleged code violation for receiving coaching before smashing her racket and getting punished again. The two rulings by Portuguese chair umpire Carlos Ramos upset Williams, who began berating him, leading to yet another penalty.
Williams denied receiving coaching but her coach admitted he was giving her signals.
Williams tried to make the issue one of sexism. “I’m here fighting for women’s rights and for women’s equality and for all kinds of stuff,” she said.
Williams tirade led to a fine of $17,000 and widespread condemnation for losing her cool and trying to deflect from her poor behavior. Among the press reports was a cartoon showing an oversized Williams jumping above a tennis racket, poised to smash it with her feet, and a pacifier lying nearby.
The cartoon prompted criticism by some, including Williams’ husband Alexis Ohanian, who claimed it was “blatantly racist and misogynistic.” But the Herald Sun refused to retract the cartoon and instead reprinted it on its front page with the headline “Welcome to PC [politically correct] World.”
The paper defended its cartoonist, Mark Knight. “If the self-appointed censors of Mark Knight get their way on his Serena Williams cartoon, our new politically correct life will be very dull indeed,” the Herald Sun wrote on its front page. Knight said the cartoon was to illustrate “her poor behavior on the day, not about race.”
“It had nothing to do with gender or race.”
Herald Sun backs Mark Knight’s cartoon on Serena Williams: https://t.co/i1NBGO8xJw pic.twitter.com/BTFONVWHh8
— Herald Sun (@theheraldsun) September 10, 2018
On Feb. 25, the Australian Press Council ruled that the cartoon did not breach any standards of practice. The council said it was aware of accusations of sexism and racism but found the accusations didn’t hold up.
“The Council notes that cartoons are commonly expressions of opinion examining serious issues and which use exaggeration and absurdity to make their point,” it said. “The Council considers that the cartoon uses exaggeration and absurdity to make its point but accepts the publisher’s claim that it does not depict Ms. Williams as an ape, rather showing her as ‘spitting the dummy’, a non-racist caricature familiar to most Australian readers.”
“Nonetheless, the Council acknowledges that some readers found the cartoon offensive. However, the Council also accepts that there was a sufficient public interest in commenting on behavior and sportsmanship during a significant dispute between a tennis player with a globally high profile and an umpire at the US Open final,” it added.
“As such, the Council does not consider that the publication failed to take reasonable steps to avoid causing substantial offense, distress or prejudice, without sufficient justification in the public interest. Accordingly, the Council concludes that its Standards of Practice were not breached.”
The latest Press Council Adjudications concern a cartoon in the Herald Sun: https://t.co/T4qnZ6ER89 and an article in the Sydney Morning Herald about laws relating to poker machines: https://t.co/EnR1fIFBCz.
— Aus Press Council (@AusPressCouncil) February 25, 2019
Statistics Appear to Back Up Umpire
Statistics of the number of code violations in grand-slam events appear to show discrimination against men, if anything, as opposed to the discrimination against women claimed by supporters of Serena Williams after she received two violations during the recent U.S. Open.
An analysis of the past 20 years of grand-slam events reveals that men have been handed 1,534 code violations, versus just 526 handed to women.
At the same event Williams received two violations, men received 86 code violations while women received only 22 in total, reported The Telegraph.
Because of the overwhelming disparity in the rate of code violations, men lead most of the types of violations, such as racket abuse. Williams received one of her violations for smashing her racket, but over the past two decades, men have received 86 percent of the racket abuse code violations.
The odd one out is coaching violations, which kicked off the whole controversy. Umpire Carlos Ramos believed Williams’s coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, was giving her hand signals while watching from the stands. It’s illegal to receive coaching from the stands.
Williams became upset when accused of receiving coaching and smashed her racket before berating Ramos. Mouratoglou admitted to coaching Williams from the stands but claimed that everyone does it.
