How reporters should cover law enforcement shootings

Two veteran journalists discuss how journalists can best report situations like the Wednesday’s ICE officer shooting Minnesota resident Renee Nicole Good

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Front pages around the nation Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning ran stories about an ICE agent fatally shooting Minneapolis mother Renee Nicole Good on Wednesday morning through the windshield of her SUV.

The first twp of paragraphs in the Wednesday story by Associated Press reporters Tim Sullivan and Giovanna Dell’Orto read:

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed a Minneapolis motorist on Wednesday during the Trump administration’s latest immigration crackdown in a major U.S. city — a shooting that federal officials claimed was an act of self-defense but that the city’s mayor described as reckless and unnecessary.

Videos taken by bystanders with different vantage points and posted to social media show an officer approaching an SUV stopped across the middle of the road, demanding the driver open the door and grabbing the handle. The SUV begins to pull forward and a different ICE officer standing in front of the vehicle pulls his weapon and immediately fires at least two shots into the SUV at close range, jumping back as the vehicle moves toward him. It was not clear from the videos if the vehicle made contact with the officer. The SUV then sped into two cars parked on a curb nearby before crashing to a stop.

The story ran in both the MinnPost and the Minnesota Star-Tribune hours after the still-unnamed federal agent shot Good.

Other outlets ran different language or led with the statements made from the government.

Fox News pushed forward with the information put forward on Wednesday afternoon and Thursday with the information from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and others in the Trump Administration, portraying Good as everything from “a domestic terrorist” to turning details of her private life into a reason.

On Thursday, the Cincinnati Enquirer, a Gannet-owned paper, ran article with the headline What is ICE? Minnesota ICE shooting leaves woman dead used passive language in the second paragraph.

The 37‑year‑old woman, Renee Nicole Good, was shot during an immigration enforcement operation Jan. 7, the sentence read.

Active, clear language makes a difference

These differences in how news outlets use language after police shootings or around any law enforcement scenario are were not surprising to Morehouse College journalism professor Nicole Carr.

She was shot in the head or shot in the face, she said, correcting the language used by the journalists in the example. Just say what it is. An ICE agent killed a woman. Shot and killed a woman. Killed her in her face. Just state the damn fact.

Carr, who teaches her students about the history of the Black Press, and about reporting as an activist of truth, said the language around covering these situations matters. She said scrutiny must be applied to authority.

We actually know exactly what to do and how to use the language because we do it with everyone outside of authority, she said. We just don’t apply it. In every story. In any story when we’re reporting on law enforcement, we don’t use what they say as a fact. We just use it as a side that should be interrogated in the same ways that witnesses and victims are in our stories. We actually know exactly what to do and how to use the language because we do it with everyone outside of authority. We just don’t apply it.

Justin Fenton, an investigative reporter for the Baltimore Banner, has a long history with covering law enforcement: it was his job when he was at the Baltimore Sun for 17 years. During that time, he covered the murder of Freddie Gray by police.

When he talks about covering law enforcement and police shootings, he immediately reverts to active language.

There’s a quote about journalism that goes viral every now and then that I’ve seen a few times where people say it’s not your job as a journalist to quote people about whether it’s raining outside, it’s your job to stick your head out the window and find out. But oftentimes, you know, there is no window to stick our head out of. There’s a brick wall, he said.

Fenton used active language in examples he gave — police shot a man with a knife or police killed a man. But he suggested keeping the lede simple with police shot a man, for example, then back out for more details.

I think it does drive people crazy when, you know, police will use language that is perhaps either unintentionally clunky or intentionally clunky to try to obscure the facts as they occurred. And so, it’s sort of on us to not say it the way they said it, but say it the way it makes the most sense or the way it reflects what, what happened.

Both suggested avoiding the word allege — Carr gives an example sentence the video allegedly shows the guy choking him — and instead just being straight forward with what is known factually, what is seen on video, and what police and witnesses say.

All these notions about objectivity and neutrality and how to approach the facts and fact gathering, it’s not foreign to us, Carr said, noting that the word allege is a word associated with legal charges. There’s no allegation; that’s what happened.

Talk to witnesses

With the proliferation of cameras and body cameras on police, there is often video of incidents.

But both Fenton and Carr said it’s still important to talk to witnesses.

Fenton urged caution with taking just one witness on their word without corroborating evidence or other statements, recalling an incident when a witness came forward to recount a situation that turned out to be false.

They say sometimes people can see something and you know, they don’t recall it correctly, he said. It doesn’t mean that they’re lying to us either.

He said, like any other situation, reporters must do the work.

I think we have an obligation to sort of try to talk to as many people as we can and that someone is willing to put their name to a version of things, he said.

Carr said it’s good journalism.

This is in line with 30 seconds into such-and-such video that shows the officer doing X, Y, Z, Carr said. Also, you can gather all of this. In shoeleather reporting, you’re never getting one witness, right? You’re getting several witnesses.

She said this is where active listening is important — asking witnesses if they can corroborate each other or video.

The bias in police shootings

For Carr, who has similar situations such as these during her career as a reporter, the issue of race, gender, LGBTQ+ status could not be separated from the issue of law enforcement shootings.

While this was a white woman and she’s representing the LGBTQ+ community and all these things, what we’re dealing with within ICE is a problem of white supremacy, Carr said. For the last six to nine months, we have watched people be profiled, U.S. citizen or not, swept off the streets, disappeared, essentially kidnapped day after day with no accountability, without knowing what facility they’re headed to, what countries they’re headed to, what their status is.

She said the media repeated the word deportation when talking about ICE being deployed to cities or standing outside courtrooms or immigration offices to take people in situations where they were appearing for part of the normal immigration process.

Deportation is an actual legal process, she said. That wouldn’t allow for you to be swept up in immigration court and disappeared or taken from your family, because the legal process doesn’t allow for that. But people were profiled, disappeared, swept up, and media kept calling this thing deportation.

By repeating the word, it blurred the meaning, she noted.

She related it back to other situations of race in law enforcement injuring and killing people. In fact, just five years ago, a Minneapolis Police Office murdered Minneapolis resident George Floyd just blocks from yesterday’s shooting.

In 2024, the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions and Vanderbilt University produced a study of 10,308 incidents involving shootings by police using publicly available records from 2015 to 2020 — often news articles. The results of the shootings were broken down into demographics of the victim — race, gender, LGBTQ+ status, and if mental health was a factor, if known. The study also looked at if the victim was injured or killed.

Finally, the study also looked at if the victim was armed with a weapon. Interestingly, vehicles were listed as a weapon — similar to the narrative produced by the Trump Administration in yesterday’s shooting.

Of all the shootings during the study period, 35 percent were non-Hispanic Black, and 21 percent were Latino or Hispanic, despite Black people making about 12 percent of the American population and Latino people making up about 18 percent of the American population.

Sixty-seven percent of all shootings in the study by police involving someone suffering from a  mental or behavioral health episode were fatal.

Carr suggested thinking about the people injured and killed when reporting.

We can’t afford to lose empathy and forget about the condition of the human spirit, she said. When you are willing to other people, or look away when something isn’t affecting you, but it’s affecting others, then you’ve already put power into the hands of wrong people.

Keep on the story

Carr said she urges reporters to hold power to account.

Now is a good time, she said, urging reporters to draw on history. It’s a really good time for these sidebar pieces about the origins of law enforcement in America.

Fenton urged a healthy skepticism — the same skepticism reporters would use of any source.

I feel like we have to be skeptical, but I also would say don’t treat everything like it’s a lie, he said. You know, you can lose your own credibility there by treating everything as though it must be a lie. Your readers want you to be measured. You know, again, I think the biggest thing I can think of is to stay on top of these things.

He said audiences want journalists to be direct when they know something is a fact and when something isn’t a fact. He said don’t soften things up for the audience just to backpedal later.

I think we have to try to be measured and dogged and stay on top of these things, he said. I just think the biggest thing is to not let first page be the last one.

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Stacy Kess is the chief of editorial for Equal Access Public Media. She previously worked as an editor and reporter at papers across the U.S. Find her on Bluesky at @stacykess.

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