Canada’s public broadcaster has instructed journalists not to describe the September 11 attacks as “terrorist attacks” in its coverage of the 25th anniversary of the attacks. An internal memo circulated to CBC News staff told journalists: “Do not refer to the Sept. 11 attacks as terrorist attacks.”
Instead, the memo said: “The hijackings led to passenger jet crashes in Washington, DC, Pennsylvania and Manhattan. The World Trade Center (WTC in second reference) was destroyed.”
The memo was signed “BB”, who the Toronto Sun identified as Basem Boshra, CBC News’ senior director of journalistic standards and public trust. The guidance was reported by the Toronto Sun and a copy was obtained by other Canadian media.
CBC said the instruction reflected its longstanding policy on the use of the words “terrorist” and “terrorism”. The broadcaster said it preferred journalists to use those terms with attribution rather than apply them themselves.
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“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,” Kerry Kelly, a CBC public affairs spokesperson, told The New York Post.
“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 policy has previously drawn criticism, including over CBC’s coverage of the 7 October 2023 attacks in Israel. CBC editor-in-chief and general manager Brodie Fenlon said in 2023 that journalists should “exercise extreme caution before using the words terrorist or terrorism”.
The September 11 attacks killed nearly 3,000 people after hijackers took control of four passenger planes. Two planes were flown into the World Trade Center in New York, one struck the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and a fourth crashed in Pennsylvania.
The memo has prompted criticism from Canadian politicians.
Conservative MP Rachel Thomas described the guidance as “shameful” and said refusing to describe the attacks as terrorism dishonoured those affected.
“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.”
CBC’s position is that terms such as “terrorist” and “terrorism” should be attributed to those making the characterization, rather than used by its journalists as their own description of an event.