With the 25th anniversary of 9/11 on the horizon, the CBC has circulated a memo to reporters and editors across all its news platforms reminding them not to refer to the attacks that claimed 3,000 lives and changed the modern world as “terrorist attacks.”
The missive from the broadcaster’s journalistic standards and practices office, a copy of which was obtained by National Post, includes a section of the “longstanding language guidance” on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks carried out by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda.
“Do not refer to the Sept. 11 attacks as terrorist attacks,” it reads about halfway through, with the first part bolded and the last two words linking back to the CBC’s internal language guide.
“The hijackings led to passenger jet crashes in Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania and Manhattan. The World Trade Center (WTC in second reference) was destroyed.”
The letter is signed BB, who is identified by the Toronto Sun as Basem Boshra, senior director of journalistic standards and public trust at CBC News.
On the morning of the attacks, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners in the continental United States.
Two of the aircraft were flown into the World Trade Center towers in Manhattan — both of which would collapse — another was slammed into the Pentagon and the fourth crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back against the terrorists.
The attacks spurred the creation of the Department of Homeland Security domestically and led to a protracted war on terror in Afghanistan. Osama Bin Laden, who orchestrated the attacks, was found and killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan in 2011.
Rachel Thomas, Conservative MP for Lethbridge, Alta., called the leaked memo shameful and accused the broadcaster of redefining “terrorism in a way that downplays the atrocity” of the terrorist attacks.
“Refusing to call it an act of terrorism dishonours the victims, their families, the survivors, and the first responders who witnessed the horrors of that day,” she wrote on X .
“Trying to sanitize or rewrite that history is deeply offensive and does a disservice to everyone who was affected by the attacks.”
Kerry Kelly, a public affairs spokesperson for CBC, told National Post in an email that “it is wholly inaccurate to state our journalists have been urged to declare that this was not a terrorist act.”
Rather, she said the memo was a regular reminder about adhering to the CBC’s language guide for “the terms ‘terrorist’ and ‘terrorism.’
“CBC preferences use of these words with attribution to credible sources, a practice shared by many of the world’s top journalistic organizations,” Kelly wrote, pointing to an October 2023 blog by Brodie Fenlon, CBC News editor in chief and general manager.
He was writing in response to a similarly leaked memo to staff regarding the use of the same words in reporting about Hamas’s terrorist attacks on Israel that had occurred a week earlier.
Staff will use the terms, he said, but they will always be “attributed to government officials, authorities, experts and politicians.”
“But CBC News does not itself designate specific groups as terrorists, or specific acts as terrorism, regardless of the region or the events, because these words are so loaded with meaning, politics and emotion that they can end up being impediments to our journalism,” Fenlon said, noting the policy has existed for decades and many news outlets employ their own.
The post included a portion of the language guide, which urges employees to “exercise extreme caution before using the words terrorist or terrorism” because they can be “highly contested” in some instances and potentially raise questions about the CBC’s “consistency and impartiality” in covering other attacks.
“Terrorism generally implies attacks against unarmed civilians for political, religious or some other ideological reason,” the guidance reads. “But it’s a highly controversial term that can leave journalists taking sides in a conflict.”
Fielding a complaint about coverage of Israel’s war against Hamas, CBC Ombudsman Maxime Bertrand called the policy a “necessary safeguard” but added that “it doesn’t guarantee ethical clarity or eliminate the potential for unconscious bias.”
“In practice, sensitivity to language and power relations demands constant vigilance and nuanced reflection. Essentially, journalists cannot be too careful,” he wrote in March.
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