RNC Bars CBC from Dallas Midterm Convention After Memo Avoids Calling 9/11 a Terrorist Attack

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In fewer than ten days, Americans will mark twenty-five years since the deadliest terrorist attack ever carried out on our soil. Nearly three thousand mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters were murdered that September morning – and the language we use to describe their deaths is not some trivial editorial debate. It is a declaration of where you stand.

So when a major state-funded news organization quietly instructs its reporters to strip the word “terrorism” from their coverage of September 11, that tells you everything you need to know about where they stand. It is a grotesque betrayal – of the dead, of their families, and of every American who remembers exactly where they were when the towers fell.

From the Post Millennial:

The Republican National Committee is holding a midterm convention next week in September, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is not invited. The RNC sent a letter to the Canadian state-funded news network denying their press credentials for the two-day Dallas event.

At issue for the RNC was a recent leaked memo sent out by CBC Senior Director of Journalistic Standards and Public Trust saying that the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States should not be referred to as a “terrorist attack.”

The memo, authored by Basem Boshra and leaked by columnist Warren Kinsella in the Toronto Sun, told CBC reporters and editors in plain English: “Do not refer to the Sept. 11 attacks as terrorist attacks” unless attributing the description to another person. Translation: the CBC’s official editorial position treated the characterization of 9/11 as terrorism like it was someone’s opinion. A debatable claim. A matter of perspective.

Boshra’s suggested alternative language was somehow even worse. He described the attacks as “hijackings led to passenger jet crashes in Washington, DC, Pennsylvania and Manhattan.” Passenger jet crashes. As though what happened at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and that field in Shanksville amounted to mechanical failures – not coordinated mass murder carried out by Islamist terrorists at the direction of Osama bin Laden. And this wasn’t some junior staffer freelancing. This directive came from the Senior Director of Journalistic Standards. It was institutional policy at a broadcaster bankrolled by Canadian taxpayers.

Too little, too late

Once the memo leaked and outrage erupted on both sides of the border, Boshra scrambled to publish a blog post reversing the policy. He conceded the guidance “has caused significant concern, anger and hurt for many people who believe CBC News seeks to minimize or obscure the horror of that day and who was behind it.” He added, “That is the last thing we want to do.”

Read that carefully. No apology. No admission of wrongdoing. Just the bloodless language of corporate crisis management – carefully hedged, deliberately passive, engineered to make the story go away rather than reckon with what the policy actually revealed about the CBC’s editorial instincts.

CBC’s head of public affairs, Chuck Thompson, mustered even less. He called the credential revocation “a disappointing development” and expressed hope it would be “reconsidered.” Disappointing. That’s the word you use when your flight gets delayed, not when your organization gets caught sanitizing the worst attack on American soil in modern history.

The RNC wasn’t buying any of it. Their letter arrived just hours after the blog post – and they held firm.

The right call

The Republican National Committee declared that allowing the CBC to attend its Dallas convention would be an “insult” to the over three thousand victims of 9/11. Hard to argue with that. Press credentials are not a birthright. They are extended at the host’s discretion, and revoking them from an outlet that maintained an active policy against calling terrorism what it is – that is not authoritarianism. That is basic accountability.

Predictably, the press freedom crowd objected. Shawn McCarthy, past president of World Press Freedom Canada, labeled the revocation “hostile” and part of broader efforts to “control the press.” But McCarthy is asking the wrong question. The real question isn’t why the RNC pulled the credentials. It’s why the CBC ever adopted this policy to begin with – and how long it would have stayed in place if Kinsella hadn’t blown the whistle.

A solemn anniversary approaches

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith offered a pointed reminder last week: Canadian troops stood shoulder-to-shoulder with American forces in Afghanistan after 9/11. Even Canada’s own history of sacrifice flatly contradicts the CBC’s sterile editorial posture. The memorial at Ground Zero does not read “site of passenger jet crashes.” It bears the names of the dead – killed in an act of war against the United States of America.

As that twenty-fifth anniversary dawns, Americans should remember not only what happened on September 11, 2001, but stay alert to those who would quietly sandblast the historical record. A style guide memo may seem like a small thing. But when it directs journalists to avert their eyes from evil, it is anything but.

Key Takeaways

• The CBC instructed reporters not to call 9/11 a terrorist attack, exposing deep institutional bias.
• The RNC rightly revoked CBC’s convention credentials, calling their presence an “insult” to victims.
• The CBC’s rushed reversal was damage control – not genuine accountability or contrition.
• With the 25th anniversary of 9/11 days away, moral clarity about that day remains non-negotiable.

Sources: The Post Millennial, Yahoo News Canada