The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reportedly instructed its journalists in an internal memo not to describe the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States as “terrorist attacks” ahead of the 25th anniversary of the tragedy. The guidance, which limits language that can be construed as politically or emotionally loaded, comes even as the Canadian government itself has designated Al-Qaida as a terrorist organization and credited the group with perpetrating the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks.
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From Just the News:
The CBC told Fox News in a statement that the guidance was part of the organization’s decision to limit language that can be construed as politically and emotionally loaded.
Journalists with the Canadian network can still describe the event as an “attack,” but warned against using words like “terror” or “terrorists.”
“It is the practice of the CBC to exercise extreme caution before using the words ‘terrorist’ and ‘terrorism,’” CBC Public Affairs Director Kerry Kelly told Fox News. “The memo was a reminder of the longstanding practice that favors the use of these terms with attribution in our reporting.”
Context
The CBC’s editorial stance on the word “terrorism” is not new. In a 2023 editor’s blog, CBC Editor-in-Chief Brodie Fenlon explained that the network does not designate groups or acts as “terrorist” or “terrorism” because those terms are “politically and emotionally loaded” and could impede impartial journalism. Instead, the CBC says it reports the facts, the scale of an event, the perspectives of those affected, and the characterizations offered by officials or experts. That longstanding approach is what the recent memo reinforced ahead of the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. The guidance also extends to other major attacks, including the 2004 Madrid train bombings, the 2005 London bombings, and the 2011 bombing at a Moscow airport.
The memo, attributed to Basem Boshra, CBC’s senior director of journalistic standards and public trust, has drawn criticism from both sides of the border. U.S. Sen. Mike Lee weighed in on social media, writing that “maybe we shouldn’t call Canada a ‘friendly country,’” while Rep. Lisa McClain noted that nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered by terrorists on September 11 and urged the network to “say the word terrorism.” The criticism comes despite the fact that the Canadian government has itself designated Al-Qaida as a terrorist organization and attributed the 2001 attacks to the group.
The debate over how media organizations describe terrorism is a recurring one. Many outlets have historically avoided the term “terrorist” in favor of more neutral language such as “militant” or “attacker,” arguing that labeling groups or individuals can compromise perceived objectivity. But the CBC’s refusal to describe the September 11 attacks as terrorism, even when the attacks themselves are universally acknowledged to have been carried out by Al-Qaida, has renewed questions about whether neutrality is being allowed to override accuracy. For the families of the victims, the distinction is not academic. As Conservative MP Rachael Thomas put it, “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.”
Scripture repeatedly emphasizes the importance of speaking truth plainly and refusing to call evil good. Isaiah 5:20 pronounces a woe on those who “call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness.” When a news organization, whose first duty is to report the truth, refuses to name a mass murder of nearly 3,000 innocent people as what it was, it does not protect neutrality, it obscures reality. The victims of September 11 and their families deserve an honest account of what happened that day, not words chosen to avoid offending anyone. Let us pray for journalists and news organizations to have the courage to call evil what it is, and that the integrity of truth would be restored in the media.
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(Excerpt from Just the News. Context from the Daily Wire. Photo Credit: COD Newsroom – COD Commemorates 20th Anniversary of 9/11 Attacks, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=110974317).
