JOURNALISTIC STANDARDS ... Canada's Public Broadcaster: 'Do NOT refer to militants, soldiers ... as 'Terrorists'

"Do not refer to militants, soldiers, or anyone else as 'terrorists'."

"The notion of terrorism remains heavily politicized and is part of the story. Even when quoting/clipping a government or a source  referring to fighters as 'terrorists', we should add context to ensure the audience understands this is opinion, not fact."

"That includes statements from the Canadian government and Canadian politicians."

George Achi, Director of Journalistic Standards, CBC

 

"Hamas terrorists aren't a resistance, they're not freedom fighters."

"They are terrorists, and no one in Canada should be supporting them, much less celebrating them."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau 

"It is the CBC's practice -- and it has been the practice in CBC newsrooms for over 30 years now -- to try to avoid using the words 'terror' and 'terrorist' on their own as a form of description without attribution."

"I think you will find many of the leading news organizations in the western world follow a similar practice."

Esther Enkin, executive editor, CBC news

Thousands attend a 'New York Stands With Israel' vigil and rally on Oct. 10 to show support for Israel following last weekend's attacks. Photo by Spencer Platt /Getty Images

Descriptions of events and those who engage in them must reflect reality. Hamas, for example, is a listed terrorist entity in Canada, as it is elsewhere in the world. This is reality. Any group that deliberately and with cruel intent inspires fear and trepidation in the minds of those they target for annihilation is by the very fact of their actions, dedicated to terrorism and therefore are terrorists.

According to the tender sensibilities of the CBC, describing the SS Nazi Corps whose mission was to oversee the annihilation of Europe's Jews, as genocidists would be verboten. 

The memo was circulated under the name of the public broadcaster's director of journalistic standards, cautioning CBC journalists at the same time to forbear from referring to 2005 as "the end of the occupation" of Gaza: "as Israel has maintained control over airspace, seafront and virtually all movement into or out of the area". The intimation being, possibly, that a country under constant violent attack from its neighbour would do well in the opinion of this man to remain within its porous borders and stop interfering in its neighbour's business plan.

Opposition Conservative Senator Leo Housakos named Hamas in an X post "a blood-thirsty terrorist group", and that "The CBC doesn't have the journalistic integrity to call it as it is. That’s why common sense people in Canada have given up on CBC years ago."  On Canada's terrorist list which includes Hamas, the Islamist-fascist group is described as "a radical Islamist-nationalist terrorist organization". But the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in its journalistic wisdom begs to differ.

It is fairly well known, unfortunately, that the CBC is not alone in its tender regard for the feelings of a terrorist group and its ardent followers distributed worldwide. The Associated Press espouses a similar style of nomenclature-descriptive reportage. Its style book's most recent edition instructs describing specific actions being perpetrated and to attribute the use of the word terrorism or terrorist to authorities, other than when discussing historical events widely acknowledged as terrorist actions.

 

Evidently the most recent Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7 doesn't qualify in their opinion either as an act of pure, unadulterated, savage terrorism. Not the slaughter of over a thousand men, women, children, the elderly and soldiers surprised by a dawn incursion through the security fence that was breached in 28 places as over a thousand Hamas 'freedom fighters' accompanied by Palestinian Islamic Jihad 'gunmen', and groups of Palestinian male civilians who couldn't pass up the opportunity to have some fun bashing Jews and looting their homes, entered towns, villages, kibbutzim and a music festival to gorge themselves on bloody slaughter.

 

 

Unsurprisingly accounts of the new conflict between Israel and Hamas from the Al Jazeera website refers to their Hamas cronies as "fighters", legitimate combatants. What atrocities?!!! And mother broadcaster, the venerable BBC defended its unwillingness to use the descriptive "terrorist" following the British Defence Secretary speaking of the policy as "verging on disgraceful". And then there's The New York Times, called out recently in The Washington Times through an opinion piece for changing a headline from "Hamas Terrorists" to the more genteel "Hamas Gunmen".

 

 

Terrorism and the Media, A Handbook for Journalists released by the United Nations' Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization published in 2017 notes that the use of the word is fraught with "emotions, memories and debate": "State terrorism generally escapes the notice of those who try to forge a common international definition of terrorism within intergovernmental organizations. And yet, the word 'terrorism' comes from the Reign of Terror perpetrated by Robespierre during the French Revolution, at the end of the 18th Century."

In 2004 the United Nations defined "terrorist acts", as "criminal acts, including against civilians, committed with the intent to cause death or serious bodily injury, or taking of hostages, with the purpose to provoke a state of terror in the general public or in a group of persons or particular persons, intimidate a population or compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act".

Check, check, check, check, and check!