Shortly after Hamas’ October 7 massacres in Israel, CBC released an internal memorandum sent to staff, which HonestReporting Canada obtained.

In the memorandum, CBC’s Director of Journalistic Standards and Practices and Public Trust, George Achi, instructed staff to not use the term terrorist or terrorism to refer to Hamas, despite Hamas’ actions on October 7 being the textbook definition of terrorism, even according to the public broadcaster’s own ombudsman.

The only exception to this rule was quoting or clipping a source referring to Hamas, but even then, “we should add context to ensure the audience understands this is opinion, not fact,” Achi wrote to staff.

The problem in calling Hamas terrorists for what they are, according to Achi, was that “the notion of terrorism remains heavily politicized and is part of the story.”

That decision to jettison factual accuracy for the sake of political correctness has helped contribute to more than 10 months of moral equivocation between Israel and Hamas on the part of CBC, as evidenced in scores of articles, columns and broadcasts.

However, even by CBC’s own policy, their use of the term terrorism has been malleable, and they’ve actively used the term in other contexts, seemingly unconcerned about political correctness.

In the August 15 episode of Your World Tonight, a CBC radio program, the broadcaster produced a report on an attempted attack by Islamic State terrorists against a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna, Austria, and the broadcaster’s reticence to call a terrorist a terrorist went out the window.

Listen to the full clip below:

In his introduction to the story, CBC journalist Tom Harrington referred to an attempted “terror attack” by the Islamic State, and later, during her broadcast, reporter Kayla Hounsell did likewise, telling listeners about the “foiled terror plot” against concert-goers.

And yet, the identical situation unfolded in Israel on October 7, when Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel, indiscriminately murdering hundreds of innocent civilians at the Supernova Sukkot Gathering, a music festival held outdoors which featured trance music and which was called a celebration of “friends, love and peace.”

CBC, which had no issues calling an attempt to kill concertgoers in Austria a terrorist attack, has expressly forbade its reporters from doing likewise in Israel, even though there is no difference in the tactics and strategy of Hamas versus the Islamic State.

Indeed, CBC’s childish refusal to call a spade a spade is not only an affront to journalistic integrity, but is morally repugnant. Hamas, by every conceivable metric, is an unabashed terrorist organization, engaging in torture, targeting of civilians for murder, rape, and hostage-taking. But because there are fringe and extremist voices which apparently are offended by such acknowledgement of the truth, CBC has evidently decided to kowtow to them.

CBC’s cowardice would be indefensible enough, and is made worse only by the fact that it is happy to use the term terrorist and terrorism when non-Israelis are the ones being targeted.