The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) sent a memo to its reporters and editors this week instructing them not to refer to the September 11, 2001, attack on America as a “terrorist attack.”
The memo, first reported by an astonished Warren Kinsella at the Toronto Sun, used boldface type to emphasize the directive to CBC employees.
“Do not refer to the Sept. 11 attacks as terrorist attacks,” the memo said bluntly.
“The hijackings led to passenger jet crashes in Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania and Manhattan. The World Trade Center was destroyed,” the memo continued, by way of explaining why the atrocity seen by most of the world as the textbook example of a “terrorist attack” should not be described as such.
According to Kinsella, the memo originated with Basem Boshra, the Senior Director of Journalistic Standards and Public Trust at CBC News.
Kinsella reached out to CBC to ask for further insights on why “hijackings” that “led to passenger jet crashes” should not be treated as terrorism.
The response, from CBC spokeswoman Kerry Kelly, was this:
CBC’s longstanding language guidance regarding the terms ‘terrorist’ and ‘terrorism’ is a preference for the use of these words with attribution, a practice shared by many of the world’s top journalistic organizations. Our general manager and editor in chief has written publicly in the past on the subject.
In other words, CBC claimed it was following in the footsteps of news organizations that have invented lively euphemisms for terrorists, such as “activists” or “militants.” The CBC guide also seemed to be using a dash of passive voice to whitewash the horror of 9/11, as if those passenger jet crashes were a force of nature, or an unexpected consequence of the crazy hijinks of the hijackers.
Kelly tried again when the New York Post (NYP) came calling on Thursday, and arguably dug the CBC’s hole even deeper:
Our focus is to report the facts of such atrocities with accuracy, clarity and detail; to convey the scale and scope of violent acts wherever they occur; to quote the people affected, and to convey the views of officials and experts on these events. We bear witness.
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.
The NYP pointed out that even Osama bin Laden referred to the 9/11 attack as an act of “blessed terror,” which really ought to be good enough for the CBC.
By the time Kelly got around to Canada’s National Post, she was engaging in Matrix-level reality distortions by claiming it was “wholly inaccurate to state our journalists have been urged to declare that this was not a terrorist act” – even though the memo said literally, exactly that, and in boldface type to boot. The CBC spokeswoman was effectively arguing there is a difference between refusing to call 9/11 a terrorist attack, and definitively stating that it was not one.
Kelly also tried to justify the memo by pointing out that CBC refused to call the October 7, 2023, atrocities perpetrated against Israel by Hamas “terrorism,” an argument that did not exactly provide the escalator ride out of the moral basement that she was hoping for.
The October 2023 blog post Kelly referred to, written by CBC News editor in chief Brodie Fenlon, offered a version of the hoary “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” canard – written after an earlier memo ordering CBC reporters not to call the Hamas attack “terrorism” was leaked to the public.
“CBC News is independent of any and all governments, yet we and other news organizations have been regularly lobbied over the years by many opposing groups to label certain people or acts of violence as terrorism – precisely because the word is so important to them and carries so much weight,” he wrote.
Fenlon quoted the relevant passage from the CBC style guide:
Exercise extreme caution before using the words terrorist and terrorism. While the language is not seriously disputed in some cases, it’s less clear if not highly contested at other times — which can lead to virtually endless questions about consistency and impartiality in our coverage of various attacks around the world.
Terrorism generally implies attacks against unarmed civilians for political, religious or some other ideological reason. But it’s a highly controversial term that can leave journalists taking sides in a conflict.
Outrage quickly boiled over on both sides of the border. Conservative MP Rachael Thomas pronounced the CBC memo “absolutely shameful,” and accused the outlet of “choosing to redefine terrorism in a way that downplays the atrocity of 9/11.”
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