Regret the Error, the schadenfreude website for news junkies, has an interesting correction from AP:

In a May 18 story about 88 Burundian refugees flying to the United States for resettlement, The Associated Press misspelled the ethnic majority in Burundi. They are Hutus, not Tutus. Also, Tanzania is in eastern Africa, not western Africa.

And indeed, the original story did say:

Burundi has long been divided by tension between the majority Tutus and minority Tutsis

But this mistake has been around for a while.

Barry Schweid wrote it first in Oct. 2006 (link expired, but Nexis turned it up.)

Same with the west/east Africa error. But the mistake didn't start with Schweid.

In fact, many news outfits didn't really know the correct names for the tribal groups, even as the slaughter in Rwanda was happening.

Aiden Hartley in The Zanzibar Chest wrote:

tall Tutsis against short Hutus in Rwanda -- though even then some hacks called them Hutsis and Tutus.

And General Wesley Clark is quoted as making a joke of the confusion in 1995.