Canadian broadcaster shifts policy on using ‘terrorism’ to describe 9/11

MONTREAL – The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) announced on Aug 28 a shift in its policy on using the word “terrorism” to describe the Sept 11, 2001, attacks on the United States ahead of their 25th anniversary.Basem Boshra, the senior director of journalistic standards at the public broadcaster, said in a blog post that CBC had previously required the term to be attributed to a source but now “direct attribution is not required for describing the historic events of 9/11 as terrorism”.The announcement follows criticism, including from senior Trump administration officials, after media outlets published an excerpt from the network’s internal language guide instructing staff not to use the word “terrorism” to describe 9/11.FBI Director Kash Patel described that as “an insult to the souls lost during our largest terrorist attack in US history”. The US ambassador to Canada also joined in the criticism, which comes amid trade tensions between the long-time allies and neighbours.In Canada, conservative opposition leader Pierre Poilievre called on CBC to apologise and retract the directive.“To call 9/11 anything other than a terrorist attack is an appalling distortion of history,” he said.Boshra wrote that the CBC’s reporting on terrorism has always been guided by the principle of attribution.“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,” he 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.”Boshra said CBC was changing its policy regarding the 9/11 attacks as it had “become an impediment to clarity and public understanding”.But in its coverage of new acts of politically or ideologically motivated violence, “we will continue to follow the journalistically sound practice of attributing causes and motivations to officials and experts,” he wrote. AFP