Canadian Broadcasting Corporation defends memo telling staff not to call 9/11 a ‘terrorist attack’

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is facing backlash after confirming it circulated internal guidance instructing reporters and editors not to describe the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as “terrorist attacks” ahead of the 25th anniversary of the atrocity.

The memo, authored by Basem Boshra, CBC News’ senior director of journalistic standards and public trust, instructs staff in bold, italicized text: “Do not refer to the Sept. 11 attacks as terrorist attacks.” It instead directs journalists to describe the events as hijackings that led to passenger jet crashes in Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania and Manhattan, and says the World Trade Center “was destroyed.”

The directive was first disclosed by Toronto Sun columnist Warren Kinsella, who wrote that he received the memo this week and called the language “Orwellian.” CBC subsequently confirmed the memo’s authenticity to multiple outlets, including The Jerusalem Post.

CBC Public Affairs Director Kerry Kelly defended the guidance as a routine reminder rather than a new policy.

“It is the practice of the CBC to exercise extreme caution before using the words ’terrorist’ and ’terrorism,’” Ms. Kelly said, adding that the broadcaster prefers those terms be attributed to outside sources rather than applied independently by CBC journalists. Ms. Kelly pointed to a 2023 blog post by CBC News editor-in-chief Brodie Fenlon — issued after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel — in which Mr. Fenlon wrote that CBC does not “designate specific groups as terrorists, or specific acts as terrorism” because the terms are “so loaded with meaning, politics and emotion that they can end up being impediments to our journalism.”

According to Fox News reporting on the guidance, CBC’s internal style guide applies the same attribution-based approach to other mass-casualty attacks, including the 2005 London bombings, the 2004 Madrid train bombings and a 2011 bombing at a Moscow airport — preferring neutral descriptive language over the word “terrorism” unless it is attributed to another source. CBC’s own style guide is not independently accessible to verify this directly.

The guidance drew swift condemnation in Canada and the U.S. Conservative Member of Parliament Rachael Thomas called it “absolutely shameful,” writing on social media that “9/11 was an act of terrorism. Full stop.” New York City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino accused the broadcaster of “a deliberate effort to undermine the fundamental truth of what happened that day.” The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs also criticized the memo, saying that describing the attacks as mere “hijackings that led to crashes” amounted to a “complete collapse of journalistic standards.”

The FBI has described the Sept. 11 attacks as the most lethal terrorist attacks in history; 19 al Qaeda hijackers killed nearly 3,000 people. The contrast with CBC’s editorial terminology is especially stark given Ottawa’s own language: Canada’s federal government lists al-Qaida as a designated terrorist entity under the Criminal Code, and its official registry states plainly that the group “perpetrated the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks of September 11, 2001” — placing 9/11 within the same terrorism framework CBC’s style guide declines to apply on its own initiative.