The Media Research Center was a key part of the right-wing campaign to destroy Renee Good after she was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, and Curtis Houck kept up that campaign in a Jan. 9 post:
On Friday afternoon, the Minnesota-based conservative media outlet Alpha News scooped the national press with the first publication of the cellphone video of Minneapolis-based Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) officer Brian Ross’s deadly confrontation Wednesday with Renee Good. As such it took a few hours for the liberal cable networks to share it and, when they did, the early reactions ranged from mixed to outright condemnation of the video providing a definitive account.
MS NOW first aired the video at the start of Katy Tur Reports with the eponymous host arguing “many will disagree” with the belief stated by Vice President JD Vance the video showed the officer was in danger of being hit by Good in her car:
Vance didn’t merely express a “belief” — he firmly stated that Good was trying to run over the officer, which turns out not to be true. And Houck’s telling of the video lefty out the part where a voice is heard saying: “Fucking bitch” after Good was shot.
Meanwhile, Mark Finkelstein groused:
Hypocrisy was in high gear on Morning Joe today regarding the Minneapolis ICE shooting. The panel accused President Trump and JD Vance of “prejudging” the situation and “jumping to conclusions.” But the panel repeatedly described Renee Nicole Good as “the victim.” If Good is the victim, that, ipso facto, makes the ICE agents the guilty parties. So who’s prejudging now?
Finkelstein doesn’t explain why he doesn’t think Good deserved to be called a victim.
Alex Christy stuck to the right-wing Alpha News narrative in a Jan. 10 post:
The trio of PBS News Hour host Geoff Bennett, MS NOW host Jonathan Capehart, and New York Times columnist David Brooks assembled on Friday to discuss the situation in Minneapolis. While Bennett failed in his moderating duties to mention new evidence that would seem to justify the ICE agent acting in self-defense, Capehart was still certain that he was in the wrong. Brooks, meanwhile, claimed he did not wish to pass judgement before an investigation but nevertheless agreed that ICE has been “acting like thugs.”
Not only did Bennett not discuss the new video—PBS did play it earlier in the show before the Brooks and Capehart segment—but he didn’t even mention the word “car” when he asked Capehart, “So, Jonathan, this week marked a grim turning point, as an ICE agent, as you both well know, shot and killed a U.S. citizen during an enforcement operation as part of President Trump’s expanded immigration raids. Your reaction to all that’s unfolded?”
[…]In the incident, you can clearly see flashing lights indicating the car belongs to law enforcement. Still, Capehart claimed that people condemning Minnesota officials’ incendiary rhetoric are the ones with the problem:
It’s not incendiary for someone to have dismissed Good as a “fucking bitch” immediately after her death? Maybe Christy is the one with the problem. He grumbled some more:
ABC, CBS, and NBC’s Friday evening news broadcasts managed to report on new video that emerged that afternoon of ICE agents telling Renee Nicole Good to get out of her car before being shot by Agent Jonathan Ross after she started to drive at him. ABC’s and NBC’s Saturday editions of Good Morning America and Today also managed to cover the critical detail, which left CBS Saturday Morning’s Ash-Har Quraishi as the odd man out.
[…]CBS has made some positive strides since Bari Weiss came aboard, but this segment was a step back.
So Weiss wants CBS to peddle the right-wing narrative on Good’s death, even if it’s false? Interesting.
Christy continued to push his assigned narrative:
MS NOW’s Ali Velshi and historian Heather Cox Richardson joined forces on Saturday to hurl what might be the most incendiary and stupid hot take on the situation in Minneapolis to date. According to Richardson, ICE Agent Jonathan Ross shot Renee Nicole Good because she was a woman trying to de-escalate the situation.
What made Richardson’s comments even dumber is that Velshi wanted to present this segment as one that was dedicated to facts, which was something he also failed at. Velshi led Richardson with a truncated version of new footage of the incident, “Let’s just go through this together. This is, we see a picture of a big dog in the back. We see her saying, ‘it’s fine, I’m not mad at you.’ We see an interaction after that with Renee Good’s wife. This is the same person that was described as a domestic terrorist, far-left lunatic, and someone who was attempting to kill an ICE officer. What do you do when all the evidence says something that’s not the case?”
While Velshi focused on the dog, he omitted Good being told to get out of the car after her wife, Rebecca, became combative and that Rebecca responded by urging her to “drive, baby, drive.” It is also ironic that Velshi would claim to care so much about facts while interviewing Richardson, who has not suffered any professional or reputational harm on the left for falsely claiming Charlie Kirk was murdered by a right-winger.
Should Christy suffer reputational harm for peddling faulty right-wing narratives? Seems like he should.