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We are launching a new campaign calling for CBC’s Senior Director of Journalistic Standards and Public Trust, Basem Boshra, to be fired after reporters were instructed not to refer to the September 11 attacks as “terrorist attacks.”

The directive comes ahead of the 25th anniversary of 9/11, when 19 al-Qaeda hijackers seized four passenger planes in a coordinated attack against the United States.

Two planes were deliberately flown into the World Trade Center in New York City, while another struck the Pentagon. A fourth crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers attempted to regain control of the aircraft.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed, including 24 Canadians.

Yet a memo circulated to CBC journalists instructed them not to describe what happened as a “terrorist attack,” instead referring to the events as “hijackings that led to passenger jet crashes.”

The terminology stands in stark contrast to that used by al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden himself.

“We say our terror against America is blessed terror,” bin Laden said while discussing the attacks.

The controversy also comes as the prosecution of those accused of orchestrating 9/11 continues. This month, a U.S. military court set a trial date for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind who has previously claimed responsibility for planning the operation.

9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and three co-conspirators will stand trial more than two decades after the attacks.

A U.S. Air Force judge ordered the military tribunal to begin on June 5, 2028.

The defendants are Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid bin ’Atash, Mustafa al… pic.twitter.com/FAfgrEaeNc

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) August 27, 2026

In 2019, while serving as news director at the Montreal Gazette, Boshra described Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada on social media as the “White People’s Party of Canada.” The Gazette publicly distanced itself from the remark, and Boshra subsequently deleted his account. The controversy was reported at the time by CBC’s French-language counterpart, Radio-Canada. CBC later hired him anyway.

CBC now receives roughly $1.5 billion annually in federal funding.

Twenty-five years after 9/11, there should be no ambiguity about what occurred that morning. Civilians were deliberately murdered to advance an ideological cause.

That is terrorism.

Sign the petition below or at FireBasem.com, to call for Boshra’s dismissal and demand that CBC acknowledge September 11 for what it was.

Tell the public broadcaster that rewriting the language surrounding one of history’s most infamous terrorist attacks does nothing to restore public trust.