Canada’s publicly-funded version of PBS and NPR, the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC), has censored the use of “terrorist attacks” to describe the September 11, 2001 (9/11) attacks by Islamist terrorist organization al-Qaeda that killed nearly 3,000 people.
The blatant distortion of a horrific historical event is so calculated and malevolent that even a liberal contributor to The Toronto Sun felt compelled to denounce it on Wednesday.
In his piece, long-time Liberal Party strategist Warren Kinsella reports that he received a memo addressed to CBC News staff from Senior Director of Journalistic Standards and Public Trust at CBC News Basem Boshra – in italicized and bolded text – mandating how writers and editors must frame the deadly 9/11 attacks:
“Do not refer to the Sept. 11 attacks as terrorist attacks.”
….
“The hijackings led to passenger jet crashes.”
In truth, Kinsella explains, the hijackings resulted in passenger jet crashes because that was the terrorists’ goal: to fly planes into buildings in order to kill people.
Kinsella says he contacted CBC spokespeople to ask them why the news organization has decided that terrorism is no longer terrorism and why “hijackings [that] led to passenger jet crashes” is not considered terrorism.
“CBC’s longstanding language guidance regarding the terms ‘terrorist’ and ‘terrorism’ is a preference for the use of these words with attribution,” CBC’s Kerry Kelly responded.
However, the memo censors the term “terrorist,’ instead of requiring attribution for its use.
Kelly goes on to say that the linguistic strategy is “a practice shared by many of the world’s top journalistic organizations.”
Kinsella agrees, noting that other new organizations – from The New York Times, CNN, Time and the BBC – have labeled terrorists “activists,” “attackers,” “fighters” and “militants,” in order to cloak their true identity.
But, popularity doesn’t sanctify, Kinsella explains:
“As we all like to remind our children, however, just because someone else does it doesn’t mean it is right. And — in particular — a lie is always a lie. A falsehood is a falsehood.”
And, even though Canadian taxpayers give them more than $1.5 billion annually, the CBC “tells us lies about history and reality.” Instead reporting the truth, the CBC insists on “rewriting the historical record” to censor the fact that thousands of innocent people were killed by terrorists on 9/11, Kinsella warns:
“It is manipulating facts to fit an ideological perspective. It is cruel and despicable. It is Orwellian.”
Until recently, America’s Public Broadcasting System (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR) were vastly funded by taxpayers. And, like the CBC, they are similarly notorious for promoting biased propaganda, under the guise of factual news reporting.
Unlike PBS and NPR, the CBC is a single news organization wholly owned by the federal government, instead of by multiple private licensees receiving government funding.
