Here was the Spanish Olympic basketball team, minding its own business by posing for a full-page newspaper ad in the "Slanty-eyed Chinaman" pose, which, as all Spanish basketball players know, is funny and endearing. Then the scurrilous English-speaking media goes and writes a news story about it, twisting it into some sort of "racist" gesture. Despite the fact that Spanish athletes have many Chinamen friends! Spanish nationalist outrage has risen up at the foreign misinterpretations of this widely practiced gesture of eye-based friendship among Spanish athletic teams. So it's only fitting that the (English) reporter who broke the story has now had to write a groveling piece defending his decision to cover this Spanish leisure activity:
The Spanish Basketball Federation insisted that certain media had "gratuitously" tried to "damage the image not just of the federation but of the country and Spanish sport" in general. The backlash started with 20 Minutes, which claimed England had written off Spain as a racist country by launching another attack. El Mundo said I had written a "venomous" article in which, "without proof", I insisted the Chinese would be offended. Marca questioned the Guardian's credibility.
Then he goes on for eight more paragraphs explaining that he's just a reporter doing his job. Sample: "Far from venomous, I used a neutral and cautious tone, and stressed that no offence was meant." Dude, just tell those critics to STFU. [Guardian UK]