Clarifying 'Terrorism' as Opposed to 'Hijackers' : CBC in the Public Trust

Photo taken on September 11, 2001 shows the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center burning after two planes crashed into each building in New York. The buildings collapsed on that day claiming 2,753 lives. September 11, 2026 marks the 25th anniversary of this event. Photo by STAN HONDA /AFP/Getty Images

 

"Do not refer to the Sept.11 attacks as terrorist attacks. [Refer to the] longstanding language guidance [on the Sept.11, 2001 al-Qaida attacks]."

"The hijackings led to passenger jet crashes in Washington D.C. Pennsylvania and Manhattan."

"The World Trade Center was destroyed [CBC internal language guide]."

Basem Boshra, senior director, journalistic standards and public trust, CBC News

 

"Refusing to call it an act of terrorism dishonours the victims, their families, the survivors, and the first responders who witnessed the horrors of that day."

"Trying to sanitize or rewrite that history is deeply offensive and does a disservice to everyone who was affected by the attacks."

"[The CBC is redefining] terrorism in a way that downplays the atrocity [of the terrorist attacks]." 

Conservative Member of Parliament Rachel Thomas

 

"It is wholly inaccurate to state our journalists have been urged to declare that this was not a terrorist act."

"[The memo represents a reminder to adhere to the CBC's language guide for] the terms 'terrorist' and 'terrorism'."

"CBC preferences use of these words with attribution to credible sources, a practice shared by many of the world's top journalistic organizations."

Kerry Kelly, CBC public affairs spokesperson 

 

"[Staff will use the terms but they will always be] attributed to government officials, authorities, experts and politicians." 

"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." 

Brodie Fenlon, CBC News editor in chief, general manager

 

"[Employees are urged to] exercise extreme caution before using the words terrorist or terrorism [because they can be] highly contested [in some instances and potentially raise questions about the CBC's] consistency and impartiality [in covering other attacks]."

"Terrorism generally implies attacks against unarmed civilians for political religious or some other ideological reason But it's a highly controversial term that can leave journalists taking sides in a conflict."

CBC Language Guide 

Confusion has been swirling about how CBC News journalists use the words 'terrorist' and 'terrorism,' particularly in connection with the al-Qaeda attacks on New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

 

Al-Qaida, the Islamist fundamentalist terrorist group operating under the late Osama bin Laden, is listed as such under Canada's terrorist list. The United Nations lists the group as terrorists. There is little doubt that  al-Qaida is acknowledged as a terrorist group almost universally, many of the Arab countries of the Middle East as well, including Saudi Arabia where it was formed, with 'radicalized' Saudi Arabians their operatives in the suicide mission that killed almost three thousand people in the aerial attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania.

 

Canada's once-respected public broadcaster, under its current administration -- well infiltrated by noxious Islamist figures that also occupy positions of trust and authority in many other Canadian institutions under the Liberal government that has seen fit to transition Canada from a nation wedded to social justice through democratic order and Western values to one that accommodates itself to the transformative presence of Muslim Brotherhood adherents -- now carefully sidesteps naming terrorism for what it is, implying in the manner of its coverage that there is room to excuse the excesses of baleful violence against the West in sympathy with the 'oppressed' of the world.

 

In that atmosphere of submission to an alternative view of Islamist jihadists where to name them as such is to burden Canada's Muslim population with institutional 'Islamophobia' which must at all costs be avoided, the CBC's operational chiefs see the value of soft-peddling Islamist extremism expressed in terrorism's slaughter of those opposing Islamic conquest, including innocent civilians who are used as proxies-for-slaughter in lieu of more prized goals such as Western officials viewed as Islam's enemies, even those who compromise themselves by their eagerness to cull favour with their growing Muslim populations.

 

The despicable position taken by the mealy-mouthed expositors of journalistic 'balance' and 'neutrality' in the face of the evil represented by barbarian hordes of Islamist jihadists whose mission is to kill, to instill fear and apprehension in the minds of those they terrify tests our civilizational mores and certainties. Prostrating themselves before the alter of accommodation, they have lost the confidence of the public who judge the public broadcaster on the quality of the journalism they place on display and find it wanting. Those same Canadians would be satisfied to see the CBC defunded by taxpayers and for it to become as totally defunct as it is morally.

 

That the CBC, under pressure applied to Prime Minister Mark Carney by Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre, by a threat made by the American Federal Bureau of Investigation over the outrage expressed by its director Kash Patel, and by the reaction of ordinary Canadians, offended and horrified that their public broadcaster is loathe to name the obvious for what it is, reflected on its original decision-making and recanted this latest order, is telling. Telling also that its withdrawal of the order not to name the 9/11 horror as a terrorist attack, and that this rescinding of the memo is to apply only to 9/11.

 

And not to CBC's regular 'neutral', non-subjective reports on the terrorist attack by Hamas on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, and the resulting invasion of Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces, in a defensive move to destroy the terrorist group controlling Gaza once and for all for which it is universally condemned by its erstwhile allies. The CBC reportage on a tiny nation fighting back against Islamist jihadists whose terrorist death-cult agenda cannot rationally be denied, is shameful, and it will continue; no slack given to public outrage over that since it is too controversial in and of itself, impacting for the present time, only Canadian Jews, not the overwhelming presence of Muslims now living in Canada. 

 

 

 

Basem Boshra, CBC

 

"...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." 

"We are doing so to remove what has unfortunately (and unintentionally) become an impediment to clarity and public understanding."

"At the same time, as new acts of politically or ideologically motivated violence occur in our world, we will continue to follow the journalistically sound practice of attributing causes and motivations to officials and experts."

Basem Boshra, Senior director of journalistic standards and public trust

 

Standing United Against Antisemitism...Heartwarming...And, Then?

"Antisemitism in Canada has risen sharply in recent years, as demonstrated in hate crime statistics and the lived experiences of Jews across the country. These experiences are traumatic in themselves, while often reopening deep wounds rooted in the collective memory of the Holocaust and other historical forms of oppression."

"This pernicious form of hate has existed throughout Canada’s history, from exclusionary immigration policies and formal professional restrictions in the past, to contemporary forms of hate on Canadian streets, communities and online, often driven by conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns from around the world."

"In the 1960s, a special committee on hate propaganda recognized the then relatively small and uncoordinated dissemination of hateful materials as a clear and present danger to the functioning of a democratic society. In response, Parliament enacted criminal prohibitions on hate propaganda that remain in place to this day."

"While these prohibitions remain a critical guardrail against rising hate, the means by which hatred is spread has evolved, and Canada faces new challenges that demand new solutions."

"The committee believes that hate cannot simply be legislated away and that education is the main tool to combat hate. General awareness-raising for Canadians and educating Canada’s youth about past and present forms of antisemitism are essential to our social cohesion."

"Online spaces are saturated with hate and misinformation that fuel radicalization. Antisemitism in these spaces ranges from shockingly explicit hate material to insidious and subtle forms of manipulation. These flawed media and information systems are pervasive, and too often play a critical role in shaping the minds of young people."

"At the same time, the committee heard that antisemitism is growing in various workplaces, with many witnesses highlighting medical professions and academia with particular concern. While Jewish communities share commonalities, they are not all the same, and antisemitism is experienced differently by different people, including based on how antisemitism intersects with other forms of prejudice, such as sexism."

"Antisemitism remains a clear and present danger to Canada’s free and democratic society. As several witnesses noted, historically antisemitism has often served as the prelude to other forms of hate. The committee is keenly aware of the similarities between antisemitism, sexism, anti-Black racism, Islamophobia, and other forms of hate, as well as the ways in which individuals can face intersectional discrimination. These prejudices undermine the social fabric of our democracy. Moreover, the possibility that these divisions can be amplified and exploited by foreign adversaries is a threat that Canada must take seriously."

Senate of Canada, Standing United Against Antisemitism 

 

On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Canadian Human Rights Commission joins people across Canada and around the world in honouring the six million Jewish lives taken during the Holocaust. Today marks the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, which alone claimed the lives of over one million Jewish people.

We call on everyone in Canada, to stand united today — and every day — against antisemitism.

We also remember the many others targeted by Nazi persecution, including ethnic Poles, Roma and Sinti communities, Soviet civilians, 2SLGBTQI+ people, people with disabilities, and political and religious dissidents.

We must never forget or deny the scale of the Holocaust, or how these horrors were allowed to happen. They were the result of deliberate state actions that normalized dehumanization, exclusion, violence and hateful rhetoric.

Canadian Human Rights Commission  

 

While conflating hate-phobias newly skyrocketing in Canada, none of which are comparable to the rate of antisemitism newly reborn out of the ashes of the Canadian past, its embers re-ignited by the last several decades of immigration, migrants and refugee intake of people from North Africa and the Middle East, bringing with them their cultural/religious traditions of Jew-hate, the Senate investigation into Canadian antisemitism on steroids fails to make a connection between the rise of Jew-hate and the presence of Muslims cultivating it. The very same committee that feels it logical to lump anti-LGBTQ attitudes and 'Islamophobia' together with antisemitism.

 

In so doing the Senate has been singing from the hymnal of the governing Liberal party, which is functionally incapable of expressing its 'regret' at the rise of antisemitism in Canada, without pairing it with a revulsion against 'Islamophobia'. Islam has earned the kind of phobia it claims is expressed against its 'religion of peace' by distinguishing itself as the single most prevalent source of terrorism worldwide. A terrorism that has stalked communities and countries as organized jihadi groups whose names, such as the Islamic State in its many guises, taking over from al-Qaeda taught the world what human butchery in the name of  'peace' through conquest is.

 

It took over17 months for fifteen members of the Senate to interview 44 witnesses respecting Canadian incidents of Jew hate that have spiked in Canada as they have elsewhere since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel of 7 October, 2023 when thousands of Palestinians, including members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Fatah, and Hamas, accompanied by ordinary Palestinian civilians flooded into Israel on an organized, planned and pre-practised barbaric splurge of mass rape, bestiality and slaughter. 

 

Palestinian student groups have been in the forefront of organizing mass anti-Israel rallies throughout Canadian cities, of organizing university pro-Palestinian camps, of organizing marches through Jewish communities to shout 'Final Solution', 'From the River to the Sea', 'Go back to Poland!', and 'Globalize the Intifada', yet the clever minds of the Senators have been unable to put two-and-two together, unless it's the 2+2 that links antisemitism with 'Islamophobia'. In so doing, they echo the very sentiments of the federal government, and from there most provincial and municipal authorities and police services taking their cue from above. 

"The committee is keenly aware of the similarities between antisemitism, sexism, anti-Black racism, Islamophobia, and other forms of hate, as well as the ways in which individuals can face intersectional discrimination."  

The 73-page report does go so far as to mention 'young Canadians' radicalized by 'social media', implicating 'malicious foreign actors'. But never do they outright use the revelatory words 'Muslims' or 'Islam'. To do so would be to invite condemnation as 'Islamophobes', and we cannot have that, now can we? Canada, they recommend, must "develop and support digital literacy and social media education initiatives". To change the indoctrinated minds of those nursed on the stereotypes of those accursed Jews who have assaulted the rights of Palestinians by resurrecting their Jewish state on Judean ancestral geography.

 

They could have studied a special report out in 2025 by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism for an accurate and realistic analysis that they themselves shirked at examining, lest they arrive at a similar conclusion: "For decades, organizations affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is also an adherent, have managed to embed themselves at all levels of Canadian society. These organizations and their radical ideologies have significant carryover effects, most notably within the academic space."  

"They [Muslim Brotherhood] basically aim to be the gatekeepers to the Muslim communities, that whenever politicians, governments or the media try to get the Muslim voice ... they would go through them."

Lorenzo Vidino, expert on Muslim Brotherhood, 2015 report to the Senate  

Adil Charkaoui's speech has drawn broad condemnation from politicians like Premier François Legault and groups like the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. (Adil Charkaoui/X)