The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) announced on Friday a change in its policy regarding the use of the term 'terrorism' to describe the September 11, 2001 attacks. This change comes ahead of the 25th anniversary of the events.
Formerly, the CBC required that such terminology be attributed to a source, but now, direct attribution is no longer required to describe the historic events of 9/11 as a terrorist act, according to a blog post by the head of journalism standards, Nahlah Ayed.
This announcement follows criticism from officials within former U.S. President Donald Trump's administration after media outlets published excerpts from CBC's internal language guide, which directed its staff not to use the word 'terrorism' to describe the September 11 events.
Kash Patel, a former official with the FBI, described the guideline as 'an affront to the souls of the victims who perished in the largest terrorist attack in U.S. history.'
The American ambassador to Canada also joined the list of critics, amid ongoing trade tensions between the two allies and neighboring countries.
In Canada, Conservative opposition leader Pierre Poilievre called on the CBC to apologize and retract the directive, stating that describing 9/11 in any way other than a terrorist attack constitutes a 'grievous distortion of history.'
Nahlah Ayed emphasized that CBC's coverage of terrorism has always been based on the principle of attributing information to sources.
She clarified, 'Let me be clear, CBC has never claimed that what happened on September 11, 2001, was not terrorism, as some commentators have alleged in recent days. We have provided comprehensive and accurate coverage of the causes and motivations of those attacks, as defined by police, governments, and an independent commission. Our effort was to ensure this information was attributed to sources.'
Ayed stated that the change in CBC's policy regarding 9/11 was made because it had "become a barrier to clarity and public understanding."
She added that, in covering new politically or ideologically motivated acts of violence, the broadcaster will continue to follow good journalistic practices by attributing causes and motivations to officials and experts.