Watchdog Says Networks Ignored Crimes, Smeared ICE in Riot Coverage [MRC REPORT]

Since the Jan. 7 fatal shooting of left-wing agitator Renee Good by an ICE officer, Minneapolis has been rocked by riots, lawlessness, and surging tensions between activists and federal law enforcement.

But according to a new analysis, the broadcast networks didn’t focus on the chaos in the streets — they focused on blaming ICE.

The Media Research Center says ABC, CBS, and NBC spent more than two hours hammering federal immigration officials, pouring nearly all their airtime into anti-ICE framing.

MRC analysts reviewed every segment on ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News from Jan. 7 through Jan. 17, 2026.

Their total: 121 minutes and 26 seconds of Minneapolis coverage — and they say 93% of it was negative toward federal immigration officials.

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS

According to the watchdog:

ABC, CBS, and NBC’s flagship evening newscasts all hit ICE with more than 90% negative coverage (91% negative on ABC and NBC, 96% negative on CBS).

Just 1.6% of the coverage included any mention of the crimes committed by the illegal aliens ICE agents were there to apprehend.

CBS never explicitly said Good hit agent Jonathan Ross with her car before he fired. ABC and NBC did so only once each.

NETWORKS FOUND ICE AGENT ROSS GUILTY OF ‘MURDER’

MRC says the imbalance was clear in the sound bites networks chose to air.

On CBS, the group claims 26 of 27 sound bites were critical of — or outright hostile toward — ICE. ABC and NBC each aired 21 hostile bites, versus only two that were positive.

One of the biggest moments, MRC says, came on Jan. 14, when ABC highlighted podcaster Joe Rogan’s criticism of the federal government: “Are we really gonna be the Gestapo? ‘Where’s your papers?’ Is that what we’ve come to?”

One of the few quotes favoring ICE, MRC notes, came from the father of Good’s ex-husband on Jan. 13’s NBC Nightly News, when he said of the encounter: “The car did hit him.”

But MRC argues that even the “93% negative” number doesn’t fully capture the tone.

It points to Jan. 12, when CBS correspondent Nicole Sganga described the incident this way: “DHS this weekend released a video showing the minutes leading up to the murder of Renee Good. She and others are heard honking car horns. Trump administration officials claim she intended to ram ICE agents before she was shot.”

MRC calls CBS’s framing particularly misleading, claiming that even while the network repeatedly aired footage from Ross’s phone showing Good hitting him with her car, CBS journalists still presented it only as something the Trump administration “claimed.”

All three networks did mention that Ross was reportedly sent to the hospital for internal bleeding after the incident — but MRC says each did it only once.

More over at MRC:

Thanks for sharing! Read the full report from @Banned_Bill here: https://t.co/0dL2nSf7sc

— MRC NewsBusters (@newsbusters) January 21, 2026