The Australian Press Council has found that a controversial Herald Sun cartoon of tennis player Serena Williams did not breach media standards.
The September 2018 cartoon by Mark Knight showed Williams smashing a racquet during her US Open final loss to Naomi Osaka.
The depiction of Williams' facial features and body were criticised by some locally and internationally as racist, prompting complaints to Australia's press watchdog.
But in an adjudication on Monday, the council sided with publisher News Corp, finding it had not overstepped the mark.
"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," it read.
Serena Williams of the US smashes her racquet while playing against Naomi Osaka. Source: Getty
"The council notes that cartoons are commonly expressions of opinion examining serious issues and which use exaggeration and absurdity to make their point."
It did acknowledge that "some readers found the cartoon offensive" but also "accept[ed] that there was a sufficient public interest in commenting on behaviour and sportsmanship during a significant dispute between a tennis player with a globally high profile and an umpire at the US Open final".
The council said it had received a number of complaints that Mr Knight had drawn a "sexist representation of a woman and a prejudicial racial stereotype of African-American people generally, rather than an actual caricature of Ms Williams' physical features".
"[If I had a second chance], I would have drawn that cartoon the same, because it was a cartoon based on an event that happened."
"I'm a cartoonist who has always been against racism ... I will not be changing the way I draw cartoons because I think I'm a very free and fair cartoonist and I accept issues on their merits and I draw them as such."
At the time of publication, Kenyan-born humanities academic Kathomi Gatwiri at Southern Cross University told SBS News it was an inhuman representation of the star.
"The grotesque way in which her body was over-exaggerated, her physical attributes, her lips. Her buttocks, her thighs, her arms. It doesn't look human," she said.
Naomi Osaka and Serena Williams after the final. Source: Getty
"And when you put that in contrast with how Naomi [Osaka] or the coach is depicted in the cartoon, you can see that is a human being. They are presented in a very careful way - not animal-like."
Comparisons were also drawn to derogatory and racist caricatures during the US era of Jim Crow, between 1877 and the mid-1960s.
Imagery used at the time to support racial segregation depicted African Americans as "innately intellectually and culturally inferior to whites", according to the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia.
