Renee Nicole Good's Murder Is Not Up for Debate
Fascist spin and an abdication of journalistic responsibility won't change what we can see with our own eyes.
Yesterday in Minneapolis, an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in her car. The 37-year-old was pulling away from officers when the agent fired three shots at close range.
The murder is not shrouded in any mystery whatsoever. There’s very clear and accessible videos of the incident. You would not know that though if you relied on CNN. Their initial coverage made it seem like the whole thing was a massive whodunit that needed solving:
You wouldn’t know it if you relied on The New York Times, either. Here’s what they reported right after the shooting (shout out to Jack for capturing)
“Neither description of the encounter could be immediately verified independently” is an interesting way to put it. What a super odd sentence to write and publish when it could indeed be verified. Quite easily, in fact. It was an easy job for the public, and what should have been an easy job for the Times team, for whom it is literally their job. That graf has since been edited, though the edit doesn’t improve much on the original, and subsequent updates didn’t either:
This is outrageous. A woman was murdered by what is essentially a state-sanctioned terrorist organization and there are many clear videos depicting the incident in full. It could not be more cut and dry. But the Times’ coverage remained focused on the debate over why it happened and, it would seem, whether the government had any justification in slaughtering one of its citizens. (The paper took until Thursday morning to conclude that—guess what?—the videos of the shooting contradicted the official line.)
The sinister passive voice in news coverage is not a new or rare phenomenon, but with events like this, the docile tone feels especially deranged. The news has never truly been unbiased, but it is a new organization’s job is to report the facts, and framing is a huge part of that. Even the tired old “gotta hear both sides” argument, which has been rotting on the vine to the point of putridity for years, doesn’t hold any water here. What is the motivation for covering a story like this?
