With the release of the latest report of the Progress Monitoring Committee of the Mass Casualty Commission on Oct. 9th, I come back to a question I have been asking for more than five years: Who’s going to investigate why the entire Nova Scotia news industry apparently missed a Tweet that might have led to getting a critical story on the air?

The report necessarily catalogues progress toward implementation of the Mass Casualty inquiry’s 130 recommendations; significantly, rating the Public Warnings criteria in its Policing Reform section as “on track.” That puts progress on improving communication by police just half way to completion on the monitoring committee’s scale. 

Radio and television news folks will recall the early focus by news media on the RCMP’s perceived shortcomings in terms of issuing public safety information during the crisis. The failures are many, and well documented including — at the first news conference following the fatal shooting of the suspect — their focus on the death of a police officer involved, while withholding the true number of victims and scale of the tragedy.

There was a great deal of criticism of the RCMP by media at the time. Surely this was a case where issuing an emergency alert should have been issued, yes. But the police did not do that, and didn’t take any action toward that level of public safety alert until it was actually contacted by the emergency alert organization. And that was just minutes before the suspect was shot and killed. (The CRTC’s public input gathering phase of its current review of the emergency alert system is coming to a close as I write).

But the police shortcomings do not change the fact that the RCMP Nova Scotia division did issue one very unusual message that should have been picked by newsrooms through the area. At 11:32 p.m. local time on a Saturday night, they put out a Tweet indicating police were “…responding to a firearms complaint in the #Portapique area. (Portapique Beach Rd, Bay Shore Rd, and Five Houses Rd.) The public is asked to avoid the area and stay in their homes with doors locked at this time.”

That’s not an everyday type of message. If police are urging residents to stay in their homes and keep their doors locked, that’s going to be news. So why wasn’t it? This is my question, still. How did the entire news industry in Nova Scotia apparently miss that Tweet?

Is there no newsroom anywhere in Nova Scotia that was staffed at 11:30 on a Saturday night? Is there no one on call, no one appointed to watch out? Did no one from any part of any radio or TV station look at Twitter on their own? What about the newspapers? How was this message missed?

I’m curious whether any broadcast newsroom has had any discussion about this: how can we make sure something like this – missing a very unusually worded post – does not happen again? 

Criticism of the police is fair here; but if it does not go hand-in-hand with newsrooms examining their own faults and failures in this case, it’s off the mark. 

Because the story could have been on the air on radio and TV while the crisis was still in progress. It could have been up on radio and TV social feeds and websites, even for stations left unequipped for late night live broadcasting. Police could have been called, stories developed, listeners and viewers advised. 

Sunday morning news practices should have been examined, too. Isn’t checking the feeds of your local police and emergency services one of the first newsroom activities of the morning? My deep dive at the time showed one radio station posting routine crime news to its website; apparently totally unaware of that one feeble attempt by police to advise the public that something had been happening. What about station management and regional concentration: I have since learned that the Sunday news on one of the closest local radio stations to Portapique was sent over out of a company radio station in New Brunswick.  Have licensees undermined the abilities of their own local stations?

It seems newsrooms did not become aware of the events until the RCMP issued their second Tweet – about eight and a half hours after the first message. The exception seems to be CBC, which put out a Tweet just after 5:30 a.m. Sunday morning, clearly having come across the late-night message from the RCMP.

To be clear, I’m not taking issue here with what radio and TV stations did once they finally did clue in to what was happening.  I maintain they could – and should – have been on the story hours earlier with better practices. 

I think we still need to talk about that.