How local and national news outlets are covering the aftermath of ICE shooting: ‘Get there, bear witness, ask questions’ | Minneapolis

After a federal immigration agent fatally shot Renee Nicole Good, 37, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with grisly videos quickly going viral on social media, news organizations across the state, country and world sent correspondents and anchors to the scene.

Since then, this media presence has fluctuated – although a well-resourced local news corps and many national journalists have remained, including journalists from the Guardian, covering further clashes between police and protesters.

Another shooting (of a man trying to flee arrest, the government said) on Wednesday drew more attention, and on Thursday, a CNN crew was hit by projectiles while covering a protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Even though outages and shutdowns have reduced local media coverage across the country, the Minneapolis media market remains strong, ensuring that the shooting – and what followed – received robust media coverage.

“I think we have the strongest media ecosystem of any city parallel to our city,” said Matt Carlson, a University of Minnesota journalism professor based in Minneapolis, mentioning the Star Tribune newspaper, Minnesota Public Radio and smaller outlets such as the Sahan Journal, which covers immigrant communities, including the Somali refugee population that has been attacked by conservatives. (There’s also Alpha News, a conservative news outlet that made headlines by publishing cellphone video taken by the ICE officer who killed Good.)

Although there are always debates about bringing in national and international journalists to cover disasters, “I think the people of Minneapolis are really excited to see national coverage of this topic, because we know we can’t stop what’s happening by ourselves,” Carlson said.

He also predicted that Minneapolis would remain an epicenter of ICE activity and counter-protests, with Donald Trump recently threatening to invoke insurrectionary action and send troops to the city.

“I would be very happy if the national news could go away because things have calmed down,” he said. “Unfortunately, this is not a case of things settling down.”

Here are some of the journalists and newsroom executives who participated in the coverage.

Omar Jimenez, anchor and correspondent, CNN

Jimenez, 32, came to the story last week with plenty of experience reporting in Minneapolis.

In May 2020, Jimenez was arrested live on CNN while covering protests in the city following the killing of George Floyd, which occurred just blocks from where Good was killed.

Although Jimenez’s team was quickly released, the incident made international headlines as an extraordinary incursion into journalists’ activities.

Since then, Jimenez has returned to the city several times to report on his travels. He said his antenna is always ready to listen for stories involving Minneapolis. So he flew to Minnesota a few hours after the shooting, arriving on the evening of Jan. 7 and driving directly from the airport to where Good was shot.

“When it became clear that it was going to get this big, that’s when one of my managers came in and said, ‘Hey, can you get to Minnesota ASAP?'” (He was only delayed, he said, because he needed to go home and get warmer clothes after seeing the weather forecast in Minnesota.)

While reporting in Minneapolis last week, Jimenez said he met with several people he first met in 2020.

“It’s a little bit of a balance in the sense that you obviously don’t want to be the story,” he said. “But I think what you want is to try to be able to convey an authentic space, especially when you have the luxury of a camera. Even if everyone sees what you see, they don’t feel it. There’s still a little barrier. And that’s why there’s a constant balance of, ‘How close do we want to get?’

Jimenez was very close to the action on January 8, when CNN viewers watched him and his team flee from law enforcement officers who had aggressively moved toward protesters after someone threw a water bottle at them.

While Jimenez is now back in New York, he said, “I’m not done with this story. I can tell you that.”

Kathleen Hennessey, editor and senior vice president, Minnesota Star Tribune

A veteran of the Associated Press and the New York Times, Hennessey only took over as editor of the newspaper (formerly the Minneapolis Star Tribune) last May. It’s fair to say it’s been busy, considering the number of major events that have happened in the state since then, including the June 2025 assassinations of state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband.

“It’s been maybe busier, newer than I expected to some extent, but it’s also been very rewarding to be in a place that feels so necessary,” she said.

Hennessey’s newsroom of about 200 people has published several major stories since the shooting, including being the first media outlet to publish the ICE officer’s name. This story drew sharp criticism from DHS Press Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, who called the outlet “reckless” and said they should “delete their story immediately” (they did not).

Hennessey said the decision to name the shooter (Jonathan Ross) was “a very deliberate and much-discussed decision” – but she added that it “wasn’t a particularly difficult decision.”

She said her news team was “on edge, prepared and ready” for Good’s story, given the increase in eviction orders in recent weeks in the community.

“At this point, we feel pretty well trained in the rapid mobilization of an all-hands-on-deck moment,” she said. “And so, it was definitely another one of those. Almost everyone immediately ran to their posts and did what they were doing.”

Given the amount of media coverage of this story, “I encourage our editorial staff to remember that no one knows this place better than we do,” she said, “and no one can be as close to the people involved and be a more reliable source for the people who actually live here.”

Not surprisingly, Hennessey said the Star Tribune’s website has received a very large number of readers online over the past week and a half – although it’s a little harder to find paying subscribers.

Going forward, she said she expects her newsroom to remain in full swing to cover the story. “It’s happening, it’s unfolding and it’s felt everywhere at once,” she said. “At any given time, there are a million videos of ICE incidents and encounters popping up everywhere that seem newsworthy.”

Alex Tabet, political reporter, MS NOW (formerly MSNBC)

Tabet, who arrived in Minnesota at 1 a.m. on January 7, traveled extremely quickly to the scene of the shooting. He had already been informed by an ICE observer that a crackdown was underway in the neighborhood, and then he learned that someone had been shot. It was his third reporting trip to Minnesota in the past month. “We were the first – at least – television crew on the ground,” he said.

Tabet’s first call was to his network’s editorial and standards executives, telling them, “Hey, this is what we know, this is what we don’t know,” he said. “And we started looking at all the information we had to try to determine what was appropriate to release, what we should expect, basically making sure that we had reached the threshold of understanding what was happening.”

Tabet, who left Minnesota on Tuesday after almost a full week, said he “hopes to get back there as soon as possible” — although he said the network has good staff on the case. The decision to leave “was a discussion between my bosses and I, as there are only a limited number of days [you can go] without sleeping.

“I know MS NOW is committed to having a strong presence on the ground because they recognize the importance of a story right now,” he said.

Megan Burks, assistant general producer, MPR News (Minnesota Public Radio)

Burks, who coordinates daily news coverage for the NPR member station, said the newsroom has settled into a new rhythm since Good’s Jan. 7 killing. And then on Wednesday, a federal officer shot a man in the leg, sparking new protests and clashes with law enforcement.

“Just when we felt like we were settling into a manageable rhythm, this new twist came along and now we’re trying to figure out again what our new normal is, what our new rhythm is,” she said.

Burks said MPR journalists have focused less on competing with other media outlets and more on answering viewers’ questions.

“Knowing we can’t focus on everything, we try to let the public determine some of what we choose to put our mark on,” she said.

Nicole Sganga, Homeland Security Correspondent, CBS News

Sganga arrived in Minneapolis two days before the shooting. She participated in a walk-through with immigration officials and interviewed Kristi Noem, the secretary of Homeland Security, asking how she can “justify” the government sending 2,000 DHS agents to the city.

As well as covering Good’s murder on the ground, Sganga covered the intensification of immigration raids after the incident.

“My approach is always: ‘go ahead, testify, ask questions,’” Sganga said.

She said it was important to cover the Minneapolis story so that it could pressure government officials on “conflicting narratives” of what happened and what is happening.

“This type of independent reporting and verification is essential to holding power to account and clarifying the facts to the public,” said Sganga, who has worked for the network for a decade.