There are certainly moments leaving room for levity and humor where It’s warranted and even welcome. This live TV moment is absolutely not one of those times. According to TV Line, Kentucky news anchor Maira Ansari was forced to apologize to viewers after reading some jokes about suicide and death live on the air.
Worse yet, the segment she was hosting focused on National Suicide Prevention Month and was intended to inform viewers of the new suicide hotline number that went into effect. “Now, talking about it doesn’t always help,” she said. “And if you hit your breaking point, instead of just taking your life, do something one step short of it. Quit your job and move to China to become, uh, a rice…Don’t quit your job. There are resources available. Talk to your loved ones and [get some] help.”
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Ansari was clearly pretty stunned by the comments on the teleprompter, shifting to her notes to close out the segment. She apologized in a long thread on X (formerly Twitter), apologizing and alleging that an unnamed producer was behind the script alteration.
“If anyone knows me you will know that is the words that were read are not how I feel or think,” she wrote on social media. “Secondly, thank you to those who have shown me love and support. I truly appreciate you. Suicide is not a joke. Mental health is something I am passionate about. I talk about it through my podcast and my stories. I try to make the dialogue personal. So, when my producer intentionally wrote terrible things about suicide and made light of it…I WAS FLOORED. I HAD NO IDEA IT WAS IN THE PROMPTER. That is why I was so confused.
“I wish it never happened. I’m honestly embarrassed. I would never joke about something like that. I’m also disturbed that I was set up like this by a co-worker,” she added. Her station, WAVE 3, didn’t provide comment to TV Line for the story but did repost Ansari’s thread to their account on X (formerly Twitter).
As the anchor notes, she usually reads the scripts beforehand but didn’t this time. There is also the notion that many people won’t expect an odd suicide joke in the middle of a serious news report, so it is hard to blame Ansari.
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