BY BELINDA M. PASCHAL
Talk about creating headlines!
In late June, the conservative American Family Association shot itself in the collective foot by relying on technology to "clean up" stories on its Web site, OneNewsNow. Instead of simply republishing the Associated Press news feed in its original format, the Web wizards behind ONN first run an automated word filter to nice up the language so it more closely conforms to AFA values and terminology preferences. Apparently, they've never heard of a nifty little practice we in the news biz call "proofreading."
Had they done a final read-through before posting a recent sports article, they wouldn't have had to tidy up the mess made by their own overzealous clean-up efforts. By using auto-replace to enforce its policy of substituting the word "gay" with a more clinical term, AFA/ONN wound up running a story under the headline, "Homosexual eases into 100 final at Olympic trials."
That would be quite a victory — an unabashedly out, loud and proud athlete representing his country in the Olympics ... except the auto-replaced "gay" in question is the runner's last name. As in world-class sprinter Tyson Gay.
OOPS.
In the wake of this glaring goof and the ensuing embarrassment, the AFA has corrected all of its online articles referring to "Tyson Homosexual." But no amount of correcting can fix such a flagrant faux pas 'cause you just can't undo stupid.
Imagine if this practice was implemented in the entertainment world. We'd be listening to the old-school soul of Marvin Homosexual and the gritty blues of John Lee Prostitute. We'd watch James Bond canoodling with Octokitty and bad guys getting head-kicked by martial arts master Jean-Claude Van Darnit. And I don't even wanna think about how auto-replace would deal with the name Dick Van Dyke.
AFA/ONN's blunder is an example of "the clbuttic effect," in which obscenity-filtering software goes all wonky in its quest to find every occurrence of a word deemed offensive and swap it out for a more acceptable synonym. As the anecdote goes, one anti-profanity system substituted "butt" for each instance of a common, one-syllable euphemism that rhymes with "brass." Unfortunately, the software couldn't distinguish between this three-letter word by itself and when it occurred as part of a larger word — hence, "classic" became "clbuttic." As a result, somewhere in the heartland of America is a sweet, very confused little old lady who still can't figure out why John Hinckley tried to "buttbuttinate" President Reagan!
That's why I'm glad my editor doesn't rely solely on technology to catch any errors I might make in my columns. If something as atrocious as the Tyson Gay gaffe were to make it into print, I'd be pretty embarrbutted.
2 comments:
Yeah...that AutoFill feature recently caused me to send a work communication to a private contact in my address book. That friend then asked me to explain why I would care about the programming schedule at CNN...especially when they know I won't even watch Fox News because I think they are too Liberal.
The mystical, magical, Anonymous Gee
Oh my! I would imagine that Dick Van Dyke would become Penis Van Lesbian? I just don't understand why people can't mind their own business and let the public decide for themselves what is obscene. Loved the article! A good laugh at the stupidity of others is always welcome.
Shari Anonymous
by the way, my middle name would become Michadese instead of Michelle! Hm, I kind of like that name. :)
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