Somewhere inside the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's newsroom, a senior editor sat down ahead of the 25th anniversary of September 11 and typed an email to all of the reporters at his station and directed them to: "Not refer to the Sept. 11 attacks as terrorist attacks." Then he hit send.
Basem Boshra, is the Senior Director of Journalistic Standards and Public Trust at CBC News, and his memo went out to the entire CBC newsroom.
The internal directive instructs CBC journalists to avoid using the word "terrorist" when describing the murder of nearly 3,000 people by 19 al Qaeda operatives who hijacked four commercial airliners and flew them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001.
CBC Public Affairs Director Kerry Kelly confirmed the memo's authenticity, telling reporters that "it is the practice of the CBC to exercise extreme caution before using the words 'terrorist' and 'terrorism.'" She added that "the memo was a reminder of the longstanding practice that favours the use of these terms with attribution."
Extreme caution. About calling a terrorist attack a terrorist attack.
This isn't some rogue mid-level producer freelancing editorial policy. CBC News General Manager and Editor-in-Chief Brodie Fenlon laid the groundwork for this in a 2023 blog post, writing: "We bear witness. But CBC News does not itself designate specific groups as terrorists." The same policy framework, per CBC's own records, has been applied to the 2005 London bombings, the 2004 Madrid train bombings, and the 2011 Moscow airport bombing.
That's weird since the Canadian government agreed it was an Islamic terrorist attack back in 2001. They even sent Canadian troops to fight alongside American soldiers in Afghanistan.
New York City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino, who represents constituents in a city that watched the towers fall, called the guidance "frankly outrageous and insulting." Conservative Canadian Member of Parliament Rachael Thomas, representing Lethbridge, Alberta, was more direct: "9/11 was an act of terrorism. Full stop."
The CBC's defense — that they use the word "terrorist" only with attribution, meaning they'll quote someone else calling it terrorism but won't say it themselves — is the kind of distinction that only makes sense inside a newsroom that has confused neutrality with cowardice. Attribution exists for disputed claims. The FBI investigated 9/11. Courts convicted conspirators. The United States government, the Canadian government, the United Nations, and every intelligence agency in the Western world calls it terrorism. There is no competing interpretation that requires journalistic balance.
What the CBC is actually doing is treating the word "terrorist" as an editorial judgment rather than a factual descriptor. That's not neutrality. That's a policy choice — one that happens to land in exactly the same place as the people who spend their time online insisting that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."
And here's the part that should bother Canadians most: they're paying for it. The CBC is state-funded media. Every Canadian who watches their tax dollars flow into the corporation is now subsidizing a newsroom that can't bring itself to state an obvious, documented, legally adjudicated fact about the deadliest attack in modern Western history.
The 25th anniversary of September 11 is two weeks away. Memorials are being planned. Families who lost someone that day will stand at Ground Zero in Manhattan and read names aloud. And Canada's national broadcaster will cover it — carefully, neutrally, with extreme caution — making sure nobody accidentally commits the sin of calling it what it was.