Going to the Tape

Vital footage in Minneapolis. Plus, shopworn “new ideas” at CBS; mixed messages for American Samoans; and they shoot horses (up), don’t they?

Some stories are most powerful visually. Just hours after Renee Good, a thirty-seven year-old mother, was killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minnesota, Kristi Noem, the secretary of Homeland Security, called her a domestic terrorist. But video from a witness quickly undercut that characterization and other official accounts of the shooting.

Without that widely shared footage, Good’s killing may have been overlooked, her death covered as just another grim statistic of the immigration crackdown. Instead, the moment has proved pivotal, changing the national conversation about ICE and immigration. The video was first published by the Minnesota Reformer, a small nonprofit newsroom launched in 2020. The Reformer has five full-time staffers.

Max Nesterak, the deputy editor, told me that the witness, Caitlin Callenson, sent him the video just as he was leaving to go to the scene. While Nesterak interviewed Callenson, his colleague Madison McVan corroborated facts on the ground, and Nesterak posted the video on X at exactly 1pm. “If we didn’t see what happened with our own eyes,” Nesterak said, “it’s hard to imagine that there would have been such a swift condemnation from Minnesota leaders.”

The administration has portrayed community monitors in Minneapolis as agitators, and critics have suggested that legal observers like Good contribute to the tensions that led to her death. But their work is vital. When Darnella Frazier received the Pulitzer Prize, in 2021, the committee highlighted “the crucial role of citizens in journalists’ quest for truth and justice.” Recent events have underscored just how crucial that role continues to be.