In a move that strains common sense and defies historical truth, Canada's public broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), has issued an internal directive instructing its journalists to avoid labeling the September 11, 2001, attacks as "terrorist attacks." This stunning editorial guidance, revealed ahead of the attacks' 25th anniversary, claims the term is too "politically and emotionally loaded" for their supposedly neutral reporting.
The CBC's Public Affairs Director, Kerry Kelly, attempted to defend this Orwellian decree, stating it reflects a "longstanding practice that favours the use of these terms with attribution in our reporting." This means, apparently, that unless someone else has already called it terrorism, the CBC won't. Because, of course, a horrific act of mass murder orchestrated by a designated terrorist organization against civilians should simply be described as "hijackings that led to passenger jet crashes in Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania and Manhattan," and the "World Trade Center was destroyed."
New York City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino did not mince words, calling the CBC's guidance "outrageous and insulting." She correctly identified it as a "deliberate effort to undermine the fundamental truth of what happened that day in direct service to Islamism," a chilling warning about the infiltration of leftist and foreign interests into public institutions.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation defended an internal memo directing its journalists not to describe the Sept. 11 attacks as "terrorist attacks" without attribution.
Conservative Canadian MP Rachael Thomas echoed the outrage, declaring the guidance "absolutely shameful." She powerfully asserted, "Refusing to call it an act of terrorism dishonors the victims, their families, the survivors, and the first responders who witnessed the horrors of that day. 9/11 was an act of terrorism. Full stop." The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs also condemned the broadcaster, characterizing the CBC's sanitized description of events as a "collapse of journalistic standards."
CBC spokesperson Kerry Kelly told Fox News Digital that the memo reflected the public broadcaster’s longstanding practice of exercising "extreme caution" with the terms "terrorist" and "terrorism."
Brodie Fenlon, CBC News general manager and editor-in-chief, further elaborated on this baffling policy in a 2023 editor’s blog, claiming, "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." This same detached neutrality was applied to the 2005 London bombings and the 2004 Madrid train bombings, treating universally recognized acts of terror as mere unfortunate incidents.
A firefighter breaks down after the World Trade Center buildings collapsed Sept. 11, 2001, after two hijacked airplanes slammed into the twin towers in a terrorist attack.
Yet, the facts remain stubbornly inconvenient for the CBC's revisionist agenda. The FBI itself unequivocally describes 9/11 as the "most lethal terrorist attacks in history," perpetrated by 19 al Qaeda terrorists who hijacked four airliners, murdering nearly 3,000 innocents. Even the Canadian government lists Al Qaida as a terrorist entity and explicitly states the organization perpetrated the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. Apparently, government agencies and law enforcement don't share the CBC's delicate sensibilities about "loaded" language.
This isn't an isolated incident. The CBC previously caused an uproar by instructing journalists not to use the term "terrorist" for Hamas militants following their barbaric October 7, 2023, attack on Israel. The pattern is clear: a calculated effort by a taxpayer-funded institution to downplay, dilute, or outright deny the reality of global terrorism, particularly when it might offend certain sensibilities or disrupt a pre-approved narrative.
Such journalistic gymnastics are more than just a failure of reporting; they represent a dangerous erosion of public trust and a capitulation to an ideological agenda that seeks to sanitize history. Americans and Canadians alike deserve media that reports the truth, not one that redefines reality to fit a woke worldview. It's a stark reminder that the fight for factual integrity and common sense is never-ending, especially against institutions that actively work to obscure it.
