Canada’s Public Broadcaster Corrects A Mistake
Canada’s public broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, got itself into needless trouble on the eve of the 25th anniversary of Al-Qaeda’s terrorist attack in the United States on September 11, 2001.
Its senior director of journalistic standards and public trust, Basem Boshra, admitted in a blog post on August 28 that the CBC had caused “significant concern, anger and hurt” by having defended its longstanding practice of only labelling events as “terrorism” if the word is attributed to an outside source.
“CBC News finds itself once again in a swirl of confusion about how our journalists use the words ‘terrorist’ and ‘terrorism,’ this time about the Al-Qaeda attacks in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001.”
The “confusion,” he stated, stemmed from the leak of an excerpt from CBC’s internal language guide, the contents of which were picked up by the media “without full context or explanation.”
CBC News never sought “to minimize or obscure the horror of that day and who was behind it,” he wrote.
“To be clear, CBC News has never said what happened … 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.”
CBC intends to mark the forthcoming anniversary of 9/11 with extensive coverage that will “continue to respectfully and thoughtfully reflect on the monumental nature of this tragedy,” he added.
Boshra said that, while the CBC will be guided in the future by the principle of attribution in reporting terrorist events, “direct attribution” will 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.”
Boshra’s explanation was necessary, and he acted wisely in swiftly issuing a clarification
Yet it is preposterous to think that a terrorist incident of such global magnitude would require attribution in the first place. Is it not obvious that 9/11 was a brazen act of terrorism carried out by an Islamic fundamentalist organization dedicated to harming the United States in particular and the West in general?
As Canadian Identity and Culture Minister Marc Miller correctly pointed out, CBC’s original policy regarding terrorism was “pedantic” and “foolish” and caused a great deal of angst and outrage.
Interestingly enough, Boshra published his blog post an hour after Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree reiterated that the federal government regards 9/11 as the “deadliest terrorist attack in history.”
In light of the ministers’ comments, one wonders whether the CBC would have adjusted its policy on terrorism had they remained deafeningly silent.
This matter should be cleared up expeditiously by a third party investigation to determine why the CBC foolishly clung to an outmoded policy with respect to 9/11 and terrorism.