If you want to sensationalize news, actor Bilal Abbas Khan has one request — keep him out of your headlines. The actor recently posted a request to ‘media outlets’ after an old interview began recirculating in which he said Hania Aamir was “cute”.
During the 2017 interview to One Take, Khan was asked during a rapid dire question round to choose one female actor from the “current lot” whom he found “hot”. After thinking for a few moments, he said “if I have to mention one, I’d say Hania [Aamir] is cute”.
Some Instagram pages and news outlets recently picked up the news and began sharing it with rather sensational headlines. One was “Bilal Abbas Khan thinks Hania Aamir is the hottest actress in Pakistan” with the others being variations of this. If anyone listened to the interview, Khan never said he believed Aamir is the hottest female actor in Pakistan.
Without naming names, Khan took to twitter to call out pages sharing these kinds of headlines.
I have generally ignored the media, but I think it's high time that few platforms that call themselves ‘media’ need to understand that they have a certain responsibility of being credible towards the people they are writing about & the ‘news’ they publish for likes and traffic.
— Bilal Abbas Khan (@bilalabbas_khan) June 30, 2021
He said some platforms “that call themselves ‘media'” need to act responsibly while publishing stories.
In a follow up tweet, he asked them to stop.
You know who you are … and I request you to please stop ✋🏽
— Bilal Abbas Khan (@bilalabbas_khan) June 30, 2021
I have never wanted any masala news for myself toh mjhe toh dhoor he rakhein . .. meherbani 🙏
“I have never wanted any masala news for myself toh mjhe toh dhoor he rakhein [so keep me far away],” he wrote.
In the age of Instagram and the battle for likes, news is often sensationalised and used as clickbait to get more views. While it may all be fair game to Instagram pages, we must always remember that there are people at the other end who will take your word as gospel. The people you’re posting about May not like what you’re saying either.
