How the Minneapolis ICE shooting videos are a media Rorschach test

By SUZANNE DOWNING

By now, most Americans who follow national news have seen video of the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis by an immigration agent who was being run over by her in her car.

What they may not realize is how profoundly different the story looks depending on where they get their information, and how little agreement there is about the facts on the ground.

According to reporting in the Washington Post, video footage shows that the ICE agent who fired the fatal shot was not directly in the vehicle’s path. That’s the headline. The paper states flatly that “the woman fatally shot by ICE in Minneapolis did not deserve to die,” declaring, without evidence, the killing was an unnecessary escalation by federal authorities during an a volatile immigration operation.

Other mainstream outlets copy that interpretation, emphasizing slow vehicle movement, disputed claims of danger, and the need to hold ICE and President Donald Trump accountable. Most reporters in the mainstream media today emulate what they see being done by the Washington Post. It’s their goal to work there.

But slow the footage down. Watch it frame by frame. A different picture emerges, one that much of the national press seems unwilling to engage honestly.

New released video shows officer acted in self defense Minneapolis police starting to walk back the tone.

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— 0HOUR1 (@0hour1) January 8, 2026

The woman was using her vehicle to block law enforcement officers from moving through a public street during an active federal operation. An officer approached her car and attempted to clear the obstruction. In that moment, the vehicle moves, whether aggressively or recklessly is the crux of the dispute.

But it does move in a way that places an officer standing in front of it at risk. He was hit by the car. To dismiss that reality entirely is to pretend that a car cannot be a lethal weapon. If she was willing to run over the officer, what else was she prepared to do?

Kristi Noem, the Department of Homeland Security secretary, described the act as an attempted ramming and even invoked the term “domestic terrorism.”

On the other side, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey has publicly rejected that interpretation, calling the federal account a “garbage narrative” and asserting that the officer’s life was never in danger. He said at a press conference that ICE needs to “get the f—- out of Minneapolis. We do not want you here.”

Frey continued, “The presence of federal immigration enforcement agents is causing chaos in our city. We’re demanding ICE to leave the city immediately.”

Tim Walz has slammed the ICE operation, warned of public safety risks, and even prepared the National Guard as protests have spread across the city. Minneapolis schools closed. Streets filled with protestors. The shooting became a flashpoint far beyond the individuals directly involved: It reveals the failed state of Minnesota. Clearly, the state has been taken over.

Much of the news coverage has leaned heavily on humanizing Renee Good. And rightly so, to a point. She was a human, a poet, a new community member, a mother, and someone who was putting herself in the middle of a conflict because she had determined that she was right and ICE and Trump are wrong.

But humanization by the media was a mission to exonerate her.

In story after story, the mainstream narrative suggests that because Good was not the target of the ICE operation, because she was a citizen, because she was described lovingly by friends and family, the use of force must therefore have been unjustified.

That is an emotional argument that tugs at the heartstrings of any sentient being.

But officers didn’t know any of that. They were operating with perceived threat in real time.

This pattern is not new. We saw it after Jan. 6, 2021, when selective facts shown by mainstream media outlets hardened instantly into moral certainty.

We saw it in the Kyle Rittenhouse case, where early narratives collapsed under sworn testimony and video evidence, but only after months of damage had been done. In each case, the “facts” the public absorbed depended almost entirely on which reporters they trusted and which outlets they avoided.

Here we go again. Left-leaning reporters and editors emphasize video angles that minimize threat, quote Democratic officials condemning federal overreach, and situate the shooting as a condemnation of Trump immigration enforcement.

Right-leaning outlets, while often more cautious, acknowledge uncertainty. But they, at least, concede that obstructing law enforcement with a vehicle is inherently dangerous.

None of this means the ICE officer was unquestionably justified. Investigations are under way, as well they should be, and there’s probably video out there that none of us has yet seen.

But pretending that the limited video footage we have seen is self-explanatory, or that intent can be read cleanly from a few seconds of grainy motion, is dishonest. People are seeing what they are primed by the media to see. Thank goodness for X and for citizen journalist doing the job the mainstream reporters won’t do.

What the public is being fed right now is less about Minneapolis and more about narrative control. Is this a story about an overzealous federal agent in a ruthless deportation machine? Or is it about the consequences of physically and illegally obstructing law enforcement in a moment of political rage?

Your answer likely depends on who you read and who you watch on that television screen.

Suzanne Downing is founder and editor of The Alaska Story, a longtime Alaskan, and former newspaper reporter and editor.