Late last week I wrote a short post pointing out that Francesco Liello, the China-based correspondent for the Italian paper, La Gazetta dello Sport, had run a leg of the Olympic torch relay in Hubei at the beginning of June. For obvious reasons, the run didn’t garner much coverage in the foreign language-press. And what little it did garner, overlooked Liello’s primary claim to notoriety: he was the journalist responsible for the utterly false Olympic Bible ban story from last year (which became a minor international incident). In my post, I point out this fact, and surmise that Liello’s relay invitation was the result of someone either overlooking the Bible Ban story, or someone forgiving it (if the latter, a very good thing – as I noted in the post).

[Read my account - and debunking - of the story here.]

Anyway, yesterday Liello posted a response to my post in the comment section of this blog (it is comment three, found here). Of course, comments don’t garner the same level of attention as posts. So, in fairness to Liello, I am elevating his comment to a full post. You’ll find it after the jump, followed by my response. The two posts to which it refers are found here, and here, and I recommend reading them first. Continue reading →