The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has instructed its journalists not to independently characterize the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as terrorism, defending the policy as part of longstanding editorial guidance that reserves the terms “terrorist” and “terrorism” for attributed statements rather than the network’s own reporting.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is facing criticism in Canada and the United States after an internal editorial memo instructed journalists not to refer to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as “terrorist attacks,” a directive the public broadcaster says reflects its longstanding policy governing the use of politically and emotionally charged terminology.
The guidance was first reported by Warren Kinsella at the Toronto Sun, which said the instruction appeared in boldface in a memo distributed to CBC reporters and editors this week.
“Do not refer to the Sept. 11 attacks as terrorist attacks,” the memo stated.
Rather than apply that description itself, the CBC guidance directed journalists toward a factual account of what occurred.
“The hijackings led to passenger jet crashes in Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania and Manhattan. The World Trade Center was destroyed,” the memo said.
According to Kinsella, the directive originated with Basem Boshra, CBC News’ senior director of journalistic standards and public trust.
The wording immediately raised questions about how CBC distinguishes between describing the events themselves and using the term terrorism, particularly given the widespread characterization of the Sept. 11 attacks as acts of terrorism.
When Kinsella sought an explanation from the broadcaster, CBC spokeswoman Kerry Kelly said the policy was not new and was consistent with practices used by other journalism organizations.
“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,” Kelly said.
The controversy expanded Thursday after the New York Post sought additional clarification.
Kelly said CBC’s approach is intended to focus its reporting on precisely describing acts of violence and presenting the assessments of witnesses, officials and experts without independently assigning the terrorism label.
“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,” Kelly said.
“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 New York Post noted that Osama bin Laden himself had referred to the Sept. 11 attack as an act of “blessed terror.”
CBC subsequently offered another explanation to Canada’s National Post, where Kelly disputed interpretations suggesting that the broadcaster was instructing journalists to affirmatively deny that 9/11 constituted terrorism.
Kelly said it was “wholly inaccurate to state our journalists have been urged to declare that this was not a terrorist act.”
Her statement drew attention to the distinction CBC is making between instructing its journalists not to independently label an event terrorism and asserting that the event itself was not terrorism.
The broadcaster has used a similar editorial standard in previous coverage of politically motivated violence, including the Hamas attacks against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
CBC declined at the time to independently characterize those attacks as terrorism, prompting a similar public debate after an internal directive concerning the terminology became public.
Brodie Fenlon, CBC News editor in chief, explained the network’s position in an October 2023 editorial blog post.
“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,” Fenlon wrote.
He also published the relevant section of CBC’s style guidance, which directs reporters to use caution when employing the terminology.
“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,” the guide states.
“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.”
That broader policy is now at the center of the dispute over the Sept. 11 memo.
Critics argue that applying the guidance to 9/11 crosses a line between maintaining journalistic neutrality and declining to use a widely accepted description of the attacks.
Conservative Canadian MP Rachael Thomas called the directive “absolutely shameful” and accused CBC of “choosing to redefine terrorism in a way that downplays the atrocity of 9/11.”
“Refusing to call it an act of terrorism dishonors the victims, their families, the survivors, and the first responders who witnessed the horrors of that day,” Thomas wrote on X.
“9/11 was an act of terrorism. Full stop. Trying to sanitize or rewrite that history is deeply offensive and does a disservice to everyone who was affected by the attacks,” she added.
Criticism also came from Republicans in the United States.
“What possible motive could there be for sanitizing the worst terrorist attack on American soil?” the official social media account for U.S. House Republicans asked on X.
The CBC maintains that its guidance does not amount to denying whether an attack meets the definition of terrorism. Instead, the broadcaster says its journalists should describe what happened in detail and attribute the terms “terrorist” or “terrorism” to governments, experts, victims or other sources rather than making the designation in CBC’s institutional voice.
The distinction has done little to quiet the backlash surrounding the new memo, particularly because its instruction concerning Sept. 11 is explicit: “Do not refer to the Sept. 11 attacks as terrorist attacks.”
The dispute therefore centers not on whether CBC journalists may report that others describe 9/11 as terrorism, but on whether Canada’s publicly funded broadcaster should itself use that terminology when reporting on one of the most consequential attacks in modern American history.
Original article
Comments