CBC releases policy change after controversy about refusing to refer to 9/11 as ‘terrorist attacks’
Canada's CBC Walks Back Internal Guidance Telling Staff Not to Call 9/11 a "Terrorist Attack"
Canada's national public broadcaster is revising its internal language guidance for how journalists should describe the September 11, 2001 attacks, after a leaked directive instructing staff to avoid the term "terrorist attack" sparked backlash ahead of the tragedy's 25th anniversary.
The original memo, authored by Basem Boshra, CBC News' senior director of journalistic standards and public trust, told reporters and editors: "Do not refer to the Sept. 11 attacks as terrorist attacks." Instead, it described the events as hijackings that led to passenger jet crashes in Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania and Manhattan, and said the World Trade Center was destroyed.
The directive was first reported by Toronto Sun columnist Warren Kinsella, who said it had been circulated to CBC News staff.
CBC released a follow-up memo on Friday addressing the controversy, explaining its reasoning and announcing the change. Boshra acknowledged that the leaked excerpt, published by several outlets without full context, had caused "significant concern, anger and hurt for many people who believe CBC News seeks to minimize or obscure the horror of that day and who was behind it."
"That is the last thing we want to do," Boshra wrote. "And our reporting on 9/11, through thousands of stories over the past 25 years, is an unflinching account of the devastating attacks by al-Qaeda, the hunt and prosecution of those responsible, the thousands of lives that were lost on that day and the incalculable loss and grief experienced by so many others as a result."
CBC said it intends to mark the upcoming 25th anniversary of September 11 with extensive special coverage that will continue to "respectfully and thoughtfully reflect on the monumental nature of this tragedy."
In defending its original guidance, the broadcaster pointed to its longstanding practice of attributing the label "terrorism" to identified perpetrators or authorities. Boshra noted that a previous editor's blog post had detailed the network's reasoning for handling the terms "terrorist" and "terrorism" with care, a practice he said is shared by other major news organizations.
"But to be clear, CBC News has never said what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, was not terrorism, as some commentators have stated in recent days," Boshra said. "We have reported fully and accurately on the reasons and motivations for those attacks as determined by police, governments and an independent commission. We've just made sure to do it with attribution."
Acknowledging that the leaked guidance had caused confusion, CBC said it would update its internal language rules so that direct attribution is no longer required when describing the September 11 attacks as terrorism. The network said the change is meant to "remove what has unfortunately (and unintentionally) become an impediment to clarity and public understanding."
The network added that for future acts of politically or ideologically motivated violence, its journalists would continue to attribute causes and motivations to officials and experts, in keeping with what it described as a "journalistically sound practice."
The policy shift comes as the United States prepares to mark 25 years since the attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people when al-Qaeda hijackers crashed airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Trials related to the plot continue to move slowly through the military court system at Guantánamo Bay.
A military judge, Lt. Col. Michael Schrama, threw out a confession made by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the attacks, ruling that statements he gave to investigators in 2007 were not voluntary. Schrama also set a trial date of June 2028 for Mohammed and three co-defendants, extending what is already a decades-long wait for the case to reach court.
