When Even 9/11 Can't Be Called Terrorism: The Media's War On Moral Clarity

Nearly 25 years after hijacked passenger jets were deliberately flown into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, killing nearly 3,000 people, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has issued an extraordinary reminder to its journalists: Don't call what happened on September 11, 2001, a "terrorist attack."

According to internal guidance reported ahead of the 25th anniversary, CBC journalists were instructed: "Do not refer to the Sept. 11 attacks as terrorist attacks." Instead, reporters are encouraged to describe what happened and attribute words such as "terrorism" to governments, officials or other sources.

CBC insists this is not an attempt to rewrite history. Public Affairs Director Kerry Kelly explained that the broadcaster exercises "extreme caution" with the terms "terrorist" and "terrorism," describing the memo as a reminder of CBC's longstanding preference for using those words with attribution.

But that explanation exposes a much larger problem.

If deliberately hijacking civilian aircraft and flying them into buildings filled with civilians cannot objectively be described as terrorism, what exactly can?

The controversy also sounds remarkably familiar. We heard virtually the same argument after October 7, 2023.

As Hamas terrorists poured across Israel's border, murdering civilians, kidnapping hostages and attacking communities and a music festival, CBC journalists received instructions telling them not to independently call the perpetrators "terrorists."

"The notion of terrorism remains heavily politicized and is part of the story," CBC's then-director of journalistic standards George Achi wrote.

Even more remarkably, journalists were instructed that when politicians or governments called the attackers terrorists, CBC should provide context so audiences understood that this was "opinion, not fact."

That may have sounded like sophisticated journalistic neutrality inside a newsroom. After October 7, it sounded absurd.

After 9/11, it sounds even worse.

CBC's defense rests on the idea that "terrorist" is an emotionally and politically loaded label. Journalists, therefore, should describe actions rather than characterize them.

There is some merit to caution. News organizations should not casually label every insurgent, protester, soldier or political opponent a terrorist simply because one side in a conflict uses that terminology.

But CBC takes a reasonable principle and stretches it until it becomes unreasonable.

Journalism constantly characterizes events.

News organizations describe killings as murders, governments as dictatorships, attacks as invasions, policies as discriminatory and atrocities as war crimes. Journalists routinely use words whose definitions involve factual judgments about what happened.

The solution isn't to abandon meaningful words. It is to use them accurately.

Terrorism has a recognizable meaning: violence or threats of violence, particularly against civilians, intended to intimidate a population or advance political, ideological or religious objectives.

By any reasonable application of that concept, 9/11 qualifies.

So does the deliberate slaughter and kidnapping of civilians on October 7.

CBC's approach produces another contradiction. The broadcaster says journalists should simply describe what happened and allow audiences to reach their own conclusions. But journalists necessarily decide which facts to include, what language describes them and what context audiences require.

There is no vocabulary-free journalism.

Calling two aircraft "hijacked passenger jets" is itself characterization based upon facts. Calling the destruction of the World Trade Center an "attack" is characterization. Calling those killed "victims" is characterization.

Why does objectivity suddenly disappear when the word "terrorism" enters the sentence?

CBC's preferred solution makes the problem stranger still.

It can report that Canada's government calls Hamas a terrorist organization. It can quote an American president describing 9/11 as terrorism. It can report terrorism charges brought by prosecutors.

Apparently the factual reality changes depending upon whose mouth the word comes from.

This effectively turns one of journalism's responsibilities over to politicians: CBC won't tell you whether deliberately massacring civilians for ideological purposes constitutes terrorism, but it will tell you that a politician thinks it does.

That isn't necessarily greater objectivity. Sometimes it is simply institutional reluctance to state the obvious.

And October 7 demonstrates why that matters.

Canada itself has officially listed Hamas as a terrorist entity since 2002. Yet after Hamas fighters deliberately attacked Israeli civilians, CBC's policy treated describing them as terrorists as something requiring attribution.

CBC Ombudsman Jack Nagler subsequently concluded that the policy complied with CBC's standards, but made an important admission: avoiding the term made CBC's task of accurately describing October 7 more difficult.

That should have been a warning.

Instead, nearly three years later, the same philosophy is being applied to 9/11.

The deeper issue isn't simply one broadcaster or one word. It is an increasingly common philosophy within modern journalism that assumes neutrality requires reporters to avoid making judgments even when overwhelming facts justify them.

There are circumstances where refusing to take sides is responsible journalism.

There are others where refusing to describe reality accurately creates its own distortion.

A journalist doesn't become biased by calling Auschwitz a concentration camp. A reporter isn't abandoning objectivity by describing the deliberate execution of civilians as murder. And a news organization isn't becoming partisan by recognizing that intentionally attacking civilians to produce political terror is terrorism.

Words can certainly be abused.

But refusing to use words because someone, somewhere might dispute them gives enormous power to those who benefit from muddying obvious distinctions.

That is what makes CBC's 9/11 guidance so revealing.

For years, defenders of policies like these could argue that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was uniquely complicated and therefore demanded extraordinary linguistic caution. October 7 tested that argument severely.

September 11 destroys it.

If al-Qaeda hijackers deliberately crashing passenger jets into the World Trade Center cannot be called terrorists without attribution, the problem isn't that the definition of terrorism has become unclear.

The problem is that parts of modern journalism have become so afraid of appearing judgmental that they increasingly struggle to make even the most basic moral distinctions.

Twenty-five years after September 11, we should be able to remember what happened without sanitizing the language required to describe it.

Nearly 3,000 people weren't simply killed in an unfortunate historical "attack."

They were victims of terrorism.

Journalism shouldn't need quotation marks, political attribution or an editorial disclaimer to say so.