Shots fired: A local news desert leads to lack of crime reporting

Based on a shooting incident in Halifax, author Pauline Dakin exposes and critiques a striking lack of local news coverage in certain regions of Canada, bringing to light the potential consequences for public safety as well as for police practices and transparency. In a context where funding for journalism is increasingly scarce, her commentary examines the deep crisis affecting Canadian media and advocates for the revitalization of local journalism as a cornerstone of community life and democratic engagement.

It was about 8:30 p.m. on a Monday night when I heard the shots. Three of them, somewhere just beyond my central Halifax backyard. Definitely shots, I thought. The flat-sounding cracks were not from a car backfiring or fireworks.
Soon flashing blue and red lights of several emergency vehicles were visible beyond the houses behind me. Police cars and armed officers were searching along a street bordering a small park that is one of the tent encampments for unhoused people in the city. I started scrolling for news. For several hours I checked the few remaining news sources in the city.

Nothing.

The next morning on my early-morning dog walk around the neighbourhood I saw the evidence of what had happened the previous night; there was a long trail of blood along the sidewalk. Someone had been seriously injured, maybe killed, judging by the amount of blood. By then the police tape that had surrounded the encampment the previous night was gone. Two police vehicles were still on the scene, parked at two corners of the park. I approached one of them.

“So it was a shooting,” I said to the officer in the SUV, pointing to the blood along the sidewalk.

“So you’re still looking for someone then?” I asked.

The officer was friendly but tight-lipped. I finished walking the dog and went home to look for what was being reported about this story.

Still nothing.