Canada's Nat'l Broadcaster Bans Calling 9/11 'Terror Attacks': Instead, 'Hijackings Led to Passenger Air Crashes'
When is a terrorist attack not a terrorist attack? To Canada’s state broadcaster, apparently when it’s the largest one ever perpetrated but has a nasty little angle exposing the truth about radical Islam.
This September, as you’re no doubt aware, marks 25 years since the 9/11 attacks claimed nearly 3,000 innocent lives in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. They were carried out by 19 terrorists trained and funded by al-Qaeda using four hijacked airliners as guided missiles.
This isn’t hard to describe. Unless, of course, you’re the “Senior Director of Journalistic Standards and Public Trust” at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s news division, a title I put in quotes because it’s a job title that functions in much the same way that Kim Jong Un refers to his nation as the “Democratic Republic of Korea.”
On Wednesday, a commentary writer for the Toronto Sun tabloid published part of a confidential memo by that senior director, Basem Boshra. In it, he makes it clear what his charges are not to do as we approach the anniversary of the deadliest terror attack in world history:
“Do not refer to the Sept. 11 attacks as terrorist attacks.”
Oh.
“Boshra states that all in bold letters, italicized, as if to emphasize the point. To make clear it is a directive, not a suggestion,” author Warren Kinsella wrote.
Instead: “The hijackings led to passenger jet crashes.”
The CBC did not deny that the language was used, and insisted that other journalistic organizations use similar language.
“CBC’s longstanding language guidance regarding the terms ‘terrorist’ and ‘terrorism’ is a preference for the use of these words with attribution, a practice shared by many of the world’s top journalistic organizations,” said CBC News spokeswoman Kerry Kelly.
“Our general manager and editor in chief has written publicly in the past on the subject.”
And this is technically true. As Kinsella noted, the BBC uses “activists” in certain circumstances; CNN uses the word “attackers”; The New York Times uses “fighters.”
However, these are in different contexts. Here was the first paragraph of a story written by Carol Rosenberg of the New York Times on the same day as Kinsella’s column was published:
The trial for four men accused of conspiring in the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001, could begin in June 2028, according to an order issued by the military judge on Wednesday.
Here’s CNN, running an Associated Press story on the same matter:
A US military judge on Wednesday set a summer 2028 trial date for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and three others accused of plotting the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The BBC also used similar language in its report, and in this July piece regarding how British firefighters are helping commemorate the 25th year since the attacks:
A group of firefighters from the North West are preparing to travel to the United States later this year to take part in a memorial stair climb for the 25th anniversary of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks.
These are three organizations so skewed toward the left that you don’t even want to be mentioned in the same breath as when it comes to journalistic standards. Yet even they refer to the 9/11 terrorist attacks as terrorist attacks.
The CBC, meanwhile? They use Canadian taxpayer dollars to refer to them as “hijackings [that] led to passenger jet crashes.”
Next month is the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
But Basem Boshra is forcing all CBC staff to call them “hijackings that led to passenger jet crashes”, not “terrorist attacks”.
Boshra is the CBC’s “Senior Director of Journalistic Standards and Public Trust”. pic.twitter.com/uGTO1rRe19
— Peter McCaffrey (@peteremcc) August 26, 2026
This isn’t just dishonest, it’s factually wrong. The hijackings did not lead to plane crashes because the hijackers were inept pilots or the weather turned bad. They were designed to turn the planes into weapons of mass destruction. They were hijackings that led to mass murder for a political purpose. They were, in a word, terrorism.
As I was saying…@CBC may have the most incompetent, ideologically captured management in the country.
I didn’t get the memo so I can say with 💯 confidence:
9/11 WAS A TERRORIST ATTACK.
Policing this language isn’t “careful journalism” It’s an insult to victims & their… pic.twitter.com/Bq26tKVw8U
— Travis Dhanraj (@Travisdhanraj) August 27, 2026
One hopes this would backfire politically, considering that the CBC has its snout in the taxpayer trough and has an obvious slant toward the forces of death and destruction so long as they’re woke-coded.
“The CBC is choosing to redefine terrorism in a way that downplays the atrocity of 9/11,” said Rachel Thomas, a Conservative member of Canada’s parliament.
This is absolutely shameful.
⁰The CBC is choosing to redefine terrorism in a way that downplays the atrocity of 9/11.
⁰Refusing 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.… pic.twitter.com/svqqyk65fq— Rachael Thomas (@RachaelThomasAB) August 26, 2026
“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. Trying to sanitize or rewrite that history is deeply offensive and does a disservice to everyone who was affected by the attacks.”
If these are the standards of the left, they can set those standards with their own money. If and when the Conservatives come to power in Canada, they should make sure that’s the only money they get. In the interim, one hopes that this shameful “Senior Director of Journalistic Standards and Public Trust” is shown the door posthaste.
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