Why has the news media still not learned how to handle a regime that lies blatantly?
Opinion
In the wake of an ICE officer’s killing of Renee Good, the Trump administration flooded the zone with easily verifiable lies. US and UK news media took the bait anyway.
Like the murder of George Floyd, which coincidently happened a few blocks away from the killing of Renee Nicole Good, what took place was clearly captured on camera — in the case of Good, from multiple angles.
There was even phone footage from Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot her.
There is really no doubt about it. Good was asked to move on. She did and her car tyres moved away from Ross, and it is clear that there was absolutely no contact and then the ICE agent leaned into the car and shot Renee Nicole Good three times in the face at point-blank range.
Just before she was shot, Renee Good told ICE: “That’s fine dude, I’m not mad at you.”
After shooting her Ross said: “Fucking bitch.”
An open and shut case?
Not according to sections of the US media and, surprisingly, some sections of the British media were far from perfect either.
Indisputable evidence framed as disputed
The key error by the media seems to have involved ignoring the evidence of their eyes, and instead reporting, sometimes uncritically, the versions of President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem and White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt.
Initially Trump claimed the ICE agent had been hit by Good‘s car but was recovering in hospital. Untrue on both counts.
Later the Trump line changed to “that woman was very, very disrespectful to law enforcement.”
She hadn’t been, but even if she had, can people be shot in America for being “disrespectful” to law enforcement officers?
Vance not only defended the ICE agent but called Good “a deranged leftist” and accused her of being part of a left-wing network.
No evidence on either count.
Noem accused Good of harassing Ross all day, even though the shooting had happened at 9:37am just after she had dropped her child off at school, and described what happened as “an act of domestic terrorism.”
Leavitt’s account was probably the most exotic: “There is plentiful video evidence to show that the officer was struck by the car, that this deranged lunatic woman was trying to ram him over with her vehicle and used that vehicle as a weapon which justifies domestic terrorism,” she said.
False in every particular.
All those comments were broadcast prominently and given a degree of credibility despite some journalistic pushback, leaving in the viewers mind at least the possibility that these are unresolved, disputed facts.
CBS News called in a specialist investigator to review all the footage who concluded that there was no possibility that Good could have been legally shot.
CBS News, under the editorial oversight of Trump supporter Bari Weiss, did not broadcast the piece although it was carried on the CBS website.
Former CBS late night star David Letterman, commenting on the network’s coverage of the killing, described CBS News as “a wreck” under its new ownership — the Trump appeaser David Ellison — “just gone.”
Fox News unsurprisingly adopted the tactic of looking into the victim rather than the killer, delving into her background, questioning her sexuality as if, without saying so, she was somehow responsible for her own fate.
On Fox News’ Jesse Watters Primetime, the headline was “Woman Rams ICE Agent, Gets Shot”.
The programme went on: The woman who lost her life was a self-proclaimed poet from Colorado, with pronouns in her bio. A 37-year-old white woman named Renee Good. The Daily Mail says she leaves behind a lesbian partner and a child from a previous marriage.”
Even more bizarrely, the Fox account continued: “She was a disrupter, although she considered herself a legal observer. But there’s no evidence she had a law degree.”
Fox also used experts to suggest that the ICE agent’s use of force had been “reasonable” — an approach mirrored by daytime host Sarah Haines on the talk show The View, who argued that by “cutting off the road” Good had “contributed to the heat.”
That was not the whole story and most of the support for the government line came from right-wing sections of the media.
The New York Times assessed the evidence from three different camera angles and concluded that Good was moving away from the ICE agent when she was shot.
CNN, by way of contrast, was blunt.
Brian Allen told viewers that new video completely destroyed the Department of Homeland Security’s story. Renee Good arrived 4 minutes before ICE. No one was stuck and cars were moving freely. She wasn’t blocking anything.
ICE showed up suddenly and aggressively and then they lied about what they had done.
Yet the uneven nature of the coverage — despite the unequivocal nature of the evidence — means that America, as with so many other Trump issues, is divided and may be contributing to the fact that, until now at least ICE agent Ross has not been charged with any offence.
Is the UK any better?
British media coverage is more nuanced but still raises some issues.
The Daily Mail reported that “the wife who brought ICE shooting victim Renee Nicole Good to Minneapolis protest is named as handywoman, 40 — as depths of couple’s disdain for Trump is revealed.”
It sounds as if the couple’s “disdain for Trump” may somehow at least have partially explained her death.
As late as Monday The Times was reporting, on page 29, claims that “Killed Driver Used car as Weapon, insists ICE Boss”.
The story leads off with, “Kristi Noem, the US Homeland Security secretary, has defended describing the actions of a driver shot dead by an immigration officer as ‘domestic terrorism’.”
The claim that she had weaponised the vehicle and that justified the use of lethal force is repeated.
The allegations are balanced by the Mayor of Minneapolis Jacob Frey accusing Noem of not wanting “an impartial investigation” because she knew her narrative about domestic terrorism was “bullshit”.
There is however here again a pattern. The line taken by the Trump administration — however outrageous and false — leads the narrative even though it is later balanced by a greater degree of scepticism.
Stop treating Trump as normal
Alas there is still an important lesson to be learned by much of the American media. They may ask some tough questions sometimes but they are still treating Trump and all his works as a kind of normal, even if at the extreme limits of normal.
They have not yet learned to handle a regime that lies blatantly, minute by minute, and one that does not deserve the respect and deference usually given to the office.
It is getting very late in the day to learn that not a word that Trump says cannot be trusted and that that’s how he should be treated.
American media should do it now in honour of Reene Nicole Good.
Meanwhile, back in the slightly less mad world of the UK media, the Mail on Sunday had a cracking story at the weekend.
It was that Trump had ordered a US army chief to draw up a plan to invade Greenland, an action, if it happened, that could end up with a wider war and the destruction of NATO.
Luckily the important political story goes on to say that the joint chiefs of staff are resisting and a diplomatic source was quoted as saying the generals think Trump’s Greenland plan is crazy and illegal. So they are trying to deflect him with other mayor military operations. The say it is “like dealing with a five-year-old.”
Would have made a great splash that story, but the splash had already been pre-booked with yet another “exclusive” interview with Reform UK Ltd leader Nigel Farage.
Nothing new in it, of course, just another silly attack on Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, the “spineless” PM who is turning the UK into a military pigmy.
Some things never change.
Raymond Snoddy is a media consultant, national newspaper columnist and former presenter of NewsWatch on BBC News. He writes for The Media Leader on Wednesdays — bookmark his column here.