Earlier this week, the Canadian taxpayer found out that they were supporting, with their hard-earned money, an organization that wouldn’t call the deadliest terror attack in human history “terrorism.”
Americans found out about it, too, and they were pretty unhappy — especially since we’re approaching the 25th anniversary of the attacks and our neighbors to the north were telling reporters with their national broadcaster that 9/11 was a situation where “hijackings led to passenger jet crashes.”
Now, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is reversing course and calling terror attacks “terrorism.” All it took was international outrage and the United States ambassador to Canada saying the language “significantly endangers our efforts to establish and harmonize a shared national and economic security partnership.”
The whole to-do began when a memo from Basem Boshra, the “Senior Director of Journalistic Standards and Public Trust” was reported by a columnist in the Toronto Sun.
(I will to put quotation marks around Boshra’s title because it’s about as true as my self-appointed title as “Starting Quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles,” except Boshra apparently takes it seriously and receives money for it.)
In it, he described the CBC’s standards regarding 9/11 reporting.
“Do not refer to the Sept. 11 attacks as terrorist attacks,” he wrote, apparently in bold italics. Instead, reporters were supposed to say that “[t]he hijackings led to passenger jet crashes.”
“CBC’s longstanding language guidance regarding the terms ‘terrorist’ and ‘terrorism’ is a preference for the use of these words with attribution, a practice shared by many of the world’s top journalistic organizations,” said CBC News spokeswoman Kerry Kelly.
“Our general manager and editor in chief has written publicly in the past on the subject.”
Indeed they had — after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel, again not a good sign:
Attribution of the word “terrorist” has been our policy for decades — mirrored by other news organizations such as the BBC, AP, AFP and Reuters, among many others. 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. 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 problem is that this policy isn’t really “mirrored” by those organizations, since it took me all of three minutes to find The Associated Press, the BBC, and The New York Times — three of the organizations mentioned either in the 2023 post or in response to the 9/11 memo controversy — using the word “terrorist attacks” in the first paragraph of a 9/11-related story. So that’s clearly bogus.
And at this point, even U.S. ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra was outraged, as was FBI Director Kash Patel:
Just this year, @FBI has been instrumental in or directly responsible for multiple disruptions of significant terrorist and violent criminal organizations operating within Canada. Failure to recognize and confront radical and terrorist ideologies significantly endangers our… https://t.co/mTeyUfStgv
— Ambassador Pete Hoekstra (@USAmbCanada) August 28, 2026
So, on Friday, Boshra backtracked, insisting that the memo — which explicitly said in bold italics to not refer to the 9/11 terror attacks as terror attacks — was “published and amplified by a number of outlets without full context or explanation” and “has 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.”
“CBC’s reporting on terrorism, wherever it occurs, has always been guided by the principle of attribution, and like other major news organizations, it has been our practice for decades. The reason for the extreme care around the use of the words ‘terrorist’ and ‘terrorism’ was detailed in this earlier editor’s blog,” he said, linking to the 2023 Israel-Hamas piece.
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. 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.
Clarity and understanding are at the heart of our journalism. The leaked excerpt without context or explanation has raised more questions for the public that we must now answer.
After reviewing our current language guidance, we have decided to adjust it to clarify that direct attribution is not required for describing the historic events of 9/11 as terrorism.
So, there was never any guidance to not refer to the 9/11 attacks as terrorism, but CBC wants to engender “clarity and understanding,” so it has adjusted the guidance that specifically said to not call the 9/11 attacks terrorism except in attributions.
Oh, and just to confuse matters more, Boshra said in closing that “we will continue to follow the journalistically sound practice of attributing causes and motivations to officials and experts.” Translation: He’s covering his posterior this time, but don’t expect him to do so in the future.
Many, many years ago, the CBC’s last truly great show, “The Kids in the Hall,” ran a hilarious (if ribald) sketch called “Screw You, Taxpayer,” in which they started out with a deliberately offensive premise and then broke the fourth wall, with cast member Mark McKinney saying that they were just wasting your money.
This included one of the other cast members, Scott Thompson, stating that he would “like to take a little bit of our national network airtime to advocate” that he be allowed to perform lewd acts “in public buildings.”
“Whoa! What a viewpoint!” McKinney responded. “And you know what? I bet it’s not yours — but you just paid to hear it!”
That’s only funny when it’s a sketch comedy show.
When it’s a terrorist attack that left nearly 3,000 innocent people dead being referred to as a situation where “hijackings led to passenger jet crashes,” not so much. And Boshra made it clear that you’ll be hearing this propagandized language again, once the storm blows over and the outrage is milder. Canadians who care about truth — whether they’re conservatives or liberals — need to defund this outrage to journalism before the CBC is allowed to resume this nonsense.
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