CBC tells staff not to call 9/11 a ‘terrorist attack’

CBC issues a reminder memo to news reporters and editors reminding them not to refer to 9/11 as a "terrorist attack." Photo by Aaron Lynett / National Post/File

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With the 25th anniversary of 9/11 on the horizon, the CBC has circulated a memo to reporters and editors across all its news platforms reminding them not to refer to the attacks that claimed 3,000 lives and changed the modern world as “terrorist attacks.”

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The missive from the broadcaster’s journalistic standards and practices office, a copy of which was obtained by National Post, includes a section of the “longstanding language guidance” on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks carried out by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda.

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“Do not refer to the Sept. 11 attacks as terrorist attacks,” it reads about halfway through, with the first part bolded and the last two words linking back to the CBC’s internal language guide.

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“The hijackings led to passenger jet crashes in Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania and Manhattan. The World Trade Center (WTC in second reference) was destroyed.”

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The letter is signed BB, who is identified by the Toronto Sun as Basem Boshra, senior director of journalistic standards and public trust at CBC News.

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On the morning of the attacks, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners in the continental United States.

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Two of the aircraft were flown into the World Trade Center towers in Manhattan — both of which would collapse — another was slammed into the Pentagon and the fourth crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back against the terrorists.

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The attacks spurred the creation of the Department of Homeland Security domestically and led to a protracted war on terror in Afghanistan. Osama Bin Laden, who orchestrated the attacks, was found and killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan in 2011.

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Rachel Thomas, Conservative MP for Lethbridge, Alta., called the leaked memo shameful and accused the broadcaster of redefining “terrorism in a way that downplays the atrocity” of the terrorist attacks.

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“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.

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“Trying to sanitize or rewrite that history is deeply offensive and does a disservice to everyone who was affected by the attacks.”

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Kerry Kelly, a public affairs spokesperson for CBC, told National Post in an email that “it is wholly inaccurate to state our journalists have been urged to declare that this was not a terrorist act.”

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Rather, she said the memo was a regular reminder about adhering to the CBC’s language guide for “the terms ‘terrorist’ and ‘terrorism.’

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“CBC preferences use of these words with attribution to credible sources, a practice shared by many of the world’s top journalistic organizations,” Kelly wrote, pointing to an October 2023 blog by Brodie Fenlon, CBC News editor in chief and general manager.