The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reversed controversial guidance Friday that had instructed its journalists not to directly describe the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as terrorism, backing away from the policy after it drew sharp condemnation from political and U.S. officials.
The controversy erupted after an internal CBC memo, first reported by the Toronto Sun, revealed that Basem Boshra, the broadcaster’s senior director of journalistic standards and public trust, had directed employees to “not refer to the Sept. 11 attacks as terrorist attacks.”
FBI Director Kash Patel criticized the CBC directive on Wednesday and called on other officials to speak out against it as well.
U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra also denounced the guidance in a social media post Friday morning, just hours before CBC announced that it was changing the policy.
“Just this year, @FBI has been instrumental in or directly responsible for multiple disruptions of significant terrorist and violent criminal organizations operating within Canada,” Hoekstra said. “Failure to recognize and confront radical and terrorist ideologies significantly endangers our efforts to establish and harmonize a shared national and economic security partnership.”
Pierre Poilievre, leader of Canada’s Conservative Party, joined the criticism, publicly calling on CBC to “immediately apologize and retract this directive.”
“To call 9/11 anything other than a terrorist attack is an appalling distortion of history,” Poilievre wrote. “It dishonours the victims and their families, the survivors, and the first responders who suffered from the horrors of that day.”
The criticism was particularly intense because the guidance emerged shortly before the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, in which Al Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes and killed nearly 3,000 people in attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and aboard United Airlines Flight 93.
Amid the mounting backlash, Boshra announced Friday that CBC was revising its policy and would no longer require journalists to attribute the characterization of the Sept. 11 attacks as terrorism to another source.
Boshra explained that CBC’s general journalistic practice has been to attribute terms such as “terrorist” and “terrorism” to sources rather than independently applying those labels to people or events.
“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,” Boshra wrote. “We are doing so to remove what has unfortunately (and unintentionally) become an impediment to clarity and public understanding.”
The dispute over CBC’s terminology comes during an already contentious period in relations between Canada and the United States, with the neighboring countries locked in an escalating trade battle involving sweeping tariffs.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recently announced that Canada would retaliate against President Trump’s 50 percent tariffs on $20 billion in Canadian goods “dollar for dollar.”
Trump responded by threatening further import tariffs against Canada as tensions between Washington and Ottawa continued to rise.
The president also escalated his confrontation with Canada this week by signing an executive order changing the U.S. designation of Lake Ontario to “Lake America,” adding another flashpoint to the increasingly strained relationship between the two countries.
{Matzav.com}
