When just showing the video isn’t enough: Minneapolis shooting puts news orgs to the test

Late Wednesday afternoon, Fox 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul reported live from the Minneapolis block where an ICE agent shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good.

“There are a ton of videos on social media of the actual shooting because there were ICE watchers in the area as this was all unfolding,” anchor Karen Scullin explains in the segment. “Most of these videos show the angle from behind the maroon SUV that the victim was driving, or from the side. There was also one from that front of that SUV. And really, these videos tell a very different story from one another.”

As news organizations incorporated the videos into their coverage on Wednesday and Thursday, I was reminded of a prediction we ran last year by Ståle Grut: “A visual verification tax comes due.”

“In 2026, newsrooms face a new reckoning,” Grut, a researcher at the University of Oslo, wrote. “Either you’ve built out visual investigative competence or you’ll pay the price in lengthy corrections, lost credibility, and missed opportunities.”

In the aftermath of Good’s killing by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, it’s clear some news organizations were better equipped than others to analyze the visual evidence provided from bystander videos. Using the same videos that were shared and viewed millions of times across the internet — but especially one video first published by the Minnesota Reformer — The New York Times, Bellingcat, and The Washington Post used visual forensics tools to challenge President Trump’s claim that the ICE agent who shot Good was acting in self-defense, a claim repeated by Vice President JD Vance in a briefing Thursday.)

Meanwhile, news organizations that simply showed and described the same videos offered conflicting or muddied narratives, based on the words they chose to use. (For instance, do you quote the agent saying “Get out of the car” or “Get out of the fucking car”?)

Ultimately, the publishers with the resources to offer something beyond a video and a description provide the biggest service to people trying to make sense of events. The question remains, though, whether audiences will seek those investigations out, or will decide that watching the videos themselves is enough.

There are two primary videos of the shooting. (Warning: Both are upsetting.)

The first video is horizontal and was filmed by bystander Caitlin Callenson. It’s four minutes and 26 seconds long. Minnesota Reformer deputy editor Max Nesterak shared the video on Twitter, where it’s been viewed more than 13 million times, and Bluesky; it’s also been viewed around 338,000 times on Minnesota Reformer’s YouTube page.

The second primary video of the shooting is a vertical video. This seems to be the same video that President Trump shared a portion of on Truth Social, slowed down and zoomed in. The clip Trump shared was 13 seconds long; the original is 46 seconds long.

Most news organizations focused on the first video, which isn’t surprising: It’s longer, clear, and close-up, taken from the street. The second video is shorter, grainier, and taken from a balcony or second floor looking down at the street. Axios Twin Cities said it was “provided to Axios by witness Antony, who declined to give his last name.”

The New York Times analyzed Callenson’s video, the vertical balcony video, and a third bystander video in a video analysis of its own, “Videos contradict Trump Administration account of ICE shooting in Minneapolis.” An excerpt from that analysis:

The moment the agent fires, he is standing here to the left of the SUV and the wheels are pointing to the right away from the agent. This appears to conflict with allegations that the SUV was ramming or about to ram the officer. President Trump and others said the federal agent was hit by the SUV, often pointing to another video filmed from a different angle. And it’s true that at this moment, in this grainy, low-resolution footage, it does look like the agent is being struck by the SUV. But when we synchronize it with the first clip, we can see the agent is not being run over. In fact, his feet are positioned away from the SUV.

The Washington Post also analyzed frames from Callenson’s video in its investigation, tagged “Visual forensics” and headlined “Video shows ICE agent in Minneapolis fired at driver as vehicle veered past him.”

Investigative collective Bellingcat, too, analyzed a portion of Callenson’s video, “frame-by-frame to highlight the positioning of the gun and phone in the ICE agent’s hands,” noting that “45 seconds after the shooting, in the same video, the camera app appears to be visible on the agent’s phone as he walks away from Good’s vehicle.”

Compare the frame-by-frame analysis with the descriptions of the videos written by other news sites. The descriptions vary in tone and word choice, even though they’re about the same primary material.

Here’s how Fox News described the first video:

Video of the scene showed Good’s car in the middle of the street in a residential neighborhood as ICE agents in a dark gray Nissan Titan truck got out and approached her vehicle.

Good is heard telling agents to “go around,” and as they walk toward her Honda Pilot, one agent tells her to “get out of the car.”

She then abruptly puts it in reverse and attempts to drive off before she is shot.

Here’s Fox 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul (text transcribed from video segment):

Watch as agents approach the driver. The 37 year old woman begins backing up as one agent has his hand on the door handle of the vehicle, and the other arm appears to be reaching inside through the car window. At the same time, there is an agent on the front left corner of that SUV. That is the agent who fires his gun first. It appears to be through the windshield. The following two shots through the open window, but there is another angle from the front of the SUV. It is the angle President Donald Trump refers to on social media when he defends the ICE agent’s actions. In it, you see the agent on the front left corner of the SUV, and in the chaos, it does appear to show that agent being hit by that SUV. The agent then fires three times, reportedly hitting the woman in the face. The driver then crashes into two parked cars. ICE is claiming self defense, that the woman was using her car as a weapon.

And from Axios Twin Cities:

What we’re hearing: In a chaotic 5-second sequence in the video viewed by Axios — filmed a short distance from the scene at 34th Street & Portland Avenue — someone yells, “Hey!” and gunshots are audible as a dark-colored SUV attempts to drive past a gathering of ICE agents and vehicles on a two-lane, one-way street.

The SUV then speeds forward and strikes a parked car a short distance away, according to the video provided to Axios by witness Antony, who declined to give his last name.

A reporter for the Minnesota Reformer obtained video from a different angle showing an agent approaching the briefly motionless SUV and reaching through the window before the vehicle drove off and shots rang out.