Lexington speedster tripped up by Web site’s computer
Technology is great, right — as long as it does what we want it to do.
If not, there can be red faces all around, like those at the American Family Association and its Onenewsnow.com Web site.
Onenewsnow handles a lot of Associated Press copy and its small staff doesn’t always have time to read every item before it goes to the Web, says Fred Jackson, the news director.
They programmed a computer to scan AP stories and make certain changes to keep the stories in line with the association’s conservative agenda. One change was to substitute “homosexual” for “gay.”
So when AP recently reported that runner Tyson Gay, a graduate of Lafayette High School in Lexington, had sped to victory and qualified for the U.S. Olympic team, the Onenewsnow computer changed Gay to Homosexual throughout the story.
“It’s been corrected,” Jackson said before The Buzz could get the first question completed.
“The organization I work for is not ashamed of the word homosexual so we basically told the filter that when you see the word ‘gay,’ you put ‘homosexual’ in,” he explained. “But as we discovered in this case, and I think one other, it doesn’t work when it comes to personal names.”
“There was good intent,” Jackson added, “but often with good intent, there comes the realization that it doesn’t work 100 percent of the time.”
Gay is in Europe and not available for comment.
Maybe he’ll see the humor in it as much as Jay Leno, National Public Radio and several Web sites that have weighed in on the switch.
