The CBC has reversed its policy that prohibited reporters from referring to 9/11 as “terrorism” without direct attribution.
CBC made the change after it was criticized by Canadian and U.S. officials, including the U.S. ambassador to Canada and the FBI director.
In a blog post on Friday, Basem Boshra, CBC’s senior director of journalistic standards and public trust, wrote that a leaked memo about the policy “has caused significant concern, anger and hurt for many people who believe CBC News seeks to minimize or obscure the horror of that day and who was behind it.”
“That is the last thing we want to do,” said Boshra, who is the senior director of journalistic standards and public trust of CBC News.
Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture Marc Miller called the policy reversal “a welcome change to what was a piece of pedantic and foolish guidance that caused legitimate anger.”
The Conservative party’s shadow minister for culture, Rachael Thomas, had called on the CBC to apologize.
As National Post previously reported, the memo was sent to CBC staff ahead of the 25th anniversary of 9/11 reminding reporters and editors of its “longstanding language guidance” on the 2001 attack, which killed almost 3,000 people, including at least 24 Canadians .
“Do not refer to the Sept. 11 attacks as terrorist attacks,” the memo read.
In a post on social media, Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree wrote that condemning the terrorist attack “is not merely a political position.” Canada has legally recognized 9/11 as a terrorist attack, he said.
“That legislation reflects Parliament’s own clear-eyed characterization of what happened that day: a deliberate, ideologically motivated terrorist attack on civilians,” Anandasangaree wrote.
“For nearly 25 years, Canada’s laws and policies have treated it as exactly that.”
In a pointed critique, FBI director Kash Patel referred to the language policy as a “bastardization of history.”
“Any agency in Canada that doesn’t publicly reject this bastardization of history, and an insult to the souls lost during our largest terrorist attack in US history will no longer have friend in this FBI… Not to mention our heroes that responded in the aftermath,” he wrote on X.
“The radical left (Canadian Broadcasting Company) is trying to rewrite history, but there is nothing controversial, complicated, or unclear about this,” the U.S. House Republicans wrote in a statement posted to X, adding, “9/11 was terrorism.”
CBC’s language guidance had instructed employees to “exercise extreme caution before using the words terrorist or terrorism” because they can be “highly contested” and could raise questions about the CBC’s “consistency and impartiality.”
“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.”
According to Boshra, the CBC has reviewed its language guidance and has “decided to adjust it to clarify that direct attribution is not required for describing the historic events of 9/11 as terrorism. We are doing so to remove what has unfortunately (and unintentionally) become an impediment to clarity and public understanding.”
Among those outraged following reports of CBC’s policy was Maureen Basnicki of Collingwood, Ont., whose husband, Ken Basnicki, was trapped on the 106th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center during the attack and died on Sept. 11, 2001.
“To know that this directive was sent, and at the management level, there’s not enough adjectives out there to describe my reaction. I was more than dismayed; I was angry,” Basnicki said.
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