Army officials have altered the headline of a recent news release to remove a term deemed offensive by some readers, including an active-duty Marine public affairs adviser, and have deleted a tweet that directed readers to the story using the same language.

Gunnery Sgt. Chanin Nuntavong, public affairs adviser for Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Mike Barrett, was one of a number of Twitter users who reacted negatively to the Army's initial post. In a tweet, Nuntavong called for an apology and tipped Army Times to the headline.

The story on Army special operators, now headlined "Unprecedented technology poses challenges for special ops," was posted Wednesday. The tweet has been removed. The story retains what appears to be the original URL, which includes the original headline.

"We deleted the tweet based on feedback from followers who were offended by the tweet," Army Lt. Col. Ben Garrett said in an emailed statement Friday to Army Times. "It was not our intent to offend anyone."

Nuntavong told Military Times that a similar statement included in a Washington Post report amounted to an apology, but "I wish it was done in a more public manner."

Nuntavong said he was "upset that as professional communicators, who I assume is running the Army Twitter account, that they didn't think this through," saying that he took to Twitter to express his concern because the Army had "put it on a public forum" initially.

He took special issue with modifying the saying "chink in one's armor" in the headline, saying it resulted in confusion.

"This word ... should be removed from our vocabulary," Nuntavong said. "We don't use the word 'niggardly' anymore."

Garrett pointed to the dictionary definition of the word "chink" as "meaning a 'crack' or a 'fissure,' adding that "the phrase and word have been in use for more than 600 years."

The phrase's use in media received nationwide attention in 2012, when an ESPN staffer was fired for using it in a headline regarding the NBA's Jeremy Lin and one of the network's anchors earned a monthlong suspension for saying it on the air.

It has appeared in multiple military and media outlets before and since: A March 2006 story in Army Times on Humvee protection ran under the headline "Chink in the Armor," and more recent uses appear everywhere from a Post story on the January White House drone incident to an Economist breakdown of the German army from October to a 2013 USA Today entertainment piece on the lead singer of the Dixie Chicks. The Navy Department's 1997 Posture Statement notes that "A fundamental part of readiness is to focus frankly and honestly on the chinks in our armor."

"Just because this is a common term doesn't make it OK," Nuntavong said. "We're educated. We're better than that."

This is not the first high-profile military Twitter deletion: Marine Corps Special Operations Command removed a Twitter post put up in advance of Martin Luther King Day in 2014 that referenced the slain civil rights leader while reminding Marines not to be a "lone shooter."

Kevin Lilley is the features editor of Military Times.

Share:
In Other News
Load More