Back In 2008, US sprinter Tyson Gay was competing in the Bejing Olympic 100 meter trials semifinals. Easily winning the race, the AP (Associated Press) released a news story about his victory. Under normal circumstances that would be all there was to the story. However, on the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow website, they had an auto correcting filter in place that looked through the words of the AP feeds and then replaced some words with others before the articles were placed on their site. One word in particular that the filter looked for was the word "gay", which the filter then replaced with "homosexual". This turned the head line for the story above from, "Gay eases into 100 final at Olympic trials" to "Homosexual eases into 100 final at Olympic trials". Furthermore, every instance of the word "gay" in that and several other articles had been replaced with "homosexual".
This error didn't last long, and the story was corrected, but fortunately not before several people got screen grabs of the incorrectly changed article and it it spread out from there. News director for the site, Fred Jackson, blamed the change on a software glitch. "We don't object to the word 'gay,'" Jackson said, except "when it refers to people who practice a homosexual lifestyle."
Tyson Gay wasn't the only one who experienced the name changed. Before the site was corrected, NBA player Rudy Gay was also an victim of the filter, having his last name changed to "Homosexual" as well.
1. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/sleuth/2008/07/christian_sites_ban_on_g_word.html
2. http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/homosexual_sets_world_sprint_record/
3. http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16044.html
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