The Washington Post came under fire on Sunday for the initial headline on an obituary for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi that called the leader of the Islamic State an “austere religious scholar.”
“There are no words. But there are three letters: WTF?” The Hill media reporter Joe Concha tweeted about the original headline, which was soon updated to refer to al-Baghdadi instead as “extremist leader of Islamic State.”
Reps for the Washington Post did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but spokeswoman Kristine Coratti Kelly tweeted a message of regret that stopped short of a full apology: “Regarding our al-Baghdadi obituary, the headline should never have read that way and we changed it quickly.”