CBC Tells Staff to Avoid Calling 9/11 ‘Terrorist Attack’
Canada's state broadcaster CBC instructed journalists not to call the September 11 attacks terrorism in anniversary coverage, sparking outrage from conservative lawmakers over the policy.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation memo explicitly directed staff to avoid terms like “terrorist” and “terrorism” when reporting on the 2001 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, as Ronny Reyes reported in New York Post.
The directive, signed by Basem Boshra, senior director of journalistic standards and public trust at CBC News, was unequivocal in its language. The memo instructed journalists not to refer to the September 11 attacks as terrorist attacks, instead describing them as hijackings that led to passenger jet crashes in Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania and Manhattan that destroyed the World Trade Center.
CBC defended the controversial policy as a decades-old practice intended to preserve journalistic impartiality. A public affairs spokesperson, Kerry Kelly, told reporters the broadcaster’s focus is reporting facts with accuracy and clarity while avoiding loaded terminology.
The policy prohibits CBC News from designating specific groups as terrorists or specific acts as terrorism, regardless of region or circumstance, because such words are allegedly laden with meaning, politics and emotion that could impede journalism, according to Kelly.
Same Policy as Major Wire Services
The Canadian broadcaster follows a similar approach to Reuters, using terrorism-related terms only when quoting others who describe events. This stands despite Osama bin Laden himself, who approved and funded the September 11 attacks, characterizing them as terrorism in videotaped statements released in December 2001, where he referred to the attacks as “blessed terror” against America.
Conservative Lawmakers Denounce Policy
Rachel Thomas, a Conservative Member of Parliament, condemned the leaked memo as shameful and accused the policy of downplaying the terror attacks. She argued that refusing to call September 11 an act of terrorism dishonors the victims, their families, survivors, and first responders who witnessed the horrors of that day.
Thomas wrote on social media that attempting to sanitize or rewrite that history is deeply offensive and does a disservice to everyone affected by the attacks.
Pattern of Controversy
This is not the first time CBC’s terrorism policy has generated criticism. The public broadcaster faced similar backlash following its coverage of the October 7, 2023, terrorist attack in Israel, when Conservative MPs demanded answers for how CBC reported on the massacre.
The Toronto Sun first published the leaked internal memo, revealing the guidance ahead of the 25th anniversary commemoration of the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil.
With information from New York Post
