The digital department at Aaj News once again apologises to actor Yasir Hussain and his family for the extremely poor choice of words in a headline about the actor.

A clarification and an apology were published on Tuesday, January 16, immediately after Hussain reacted to the said headline on the Urdu website of Aaj News.

The news item or the headlines never suggested that God forbid, something bad had happened to the actor. The news item was based on one of the posts Hussain shared on Instagram and the social media buzz around it. In his Instagram post, the actor had reacted to a thumbnail produced by a YouTuber who falsely claimed Hussain had passed away.

The actor slammed the thumbnail and his strong reaction went, generating an online buzz. Dozens of news outlets including Aaj News reported the whole episode.

However, at Aaj News our Urdu website ended up quoting the text of the thumbnail in question verbatim in the headline and then adding that this had gone viral on social media. The headline was shared to social media pages with a link to the full story which covered Hussain’s take on the thumbnail and comments from social media users.

The choice of words for the headline was unfortunate and we sincerely apologise for it.