It’s too bad Nick Shirley wasn’t there recording what happened Jan. 7 on Portland Avenue in Minneapolis. Instead of ambushing day care centers under false pretenses and spreading lies and misinformation, he would have to concede that the murder of Renae Nicole Good was just that, a murder.
This tragic event provides another example of what has happened to truth and facts in public discourse through extremely partisan news media, the digital world of social media, and more recently, top government officials who lie as easily as they breathe. Any reasonable person will agree that videos clearly showed Good was not acting as a ‘domestic terrorist’, as our rogue government officials claimed.
In the words of David Enrich, they continue to try to “murder the truth.” That is the title of his 2025 book, Murder the Truth – Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful. While focusing primarily on libel law and freedom of expression under the First Amendment, the theme underlies the current assault on the professional news media, bellowing ‘fake news,’ and on justice and the rule of law.
Baseball analogy
About facts and truth, I offer an analogy from baseball. At a major league baseball game, the stands are filled with people who left their political views outside the gate, presumably. Over the home plate in front of the catcher and umpire, sits the strike zone. Invisible, it is nonetheless a fact: the width of home plate, and the height between the batter’s knees and shoulders.
While no one disputes the fact of the strike zone, debate sometimes ensues when people have differing opinions whether or not a pitch crossed the plate in the strike zone. Most of the time the umpires do a great job calling that. And now cameras can verify that. The strike zone is fact; where the ball passes is both fact, and truth, the latter being a judgment about its locational relationship with the fact.
That judgment is justice in the context of rules and laws. Umpires and referees dispense justice when making a call. Sports, without rules and justified calls, would be utter chaos. In politics and government, chaos is being created by attempts to murder truth, justice, and rule of law.
In the murder of Renae Nicole Good, the rogue government officials are saying the shooting was justified, and using the baseball analogy, in the strike zone, when in reality it was an extremely wild pitch. Like at a game, anyone in the farthest seats could see that.
Even Nick Shirley, had he been there, would have to agree, privately if not publicly. It’s as if the umpire was paid off or otherwise coerced to call the wild pitch a strike. That is no different than Fox and other right wing “news” outlets continuing to spew the lie that the shooting was self-defense.
Freedom of expression
Relating to Enrich’s book, Renae Good was simply exercising her First Amendment rights. That is what Americans are doing when they rally and monitor ICE actions. At virtually all of the confrontations so far, the people have refrained from any violence. Everyone knows that is what the oppressors want to see, violence, so they can commit even more violence. (Peaceful protest is the theme of my Oct. 23, 2025 post, Even Radicals Have Rules.)
After repeated views of the videos and hearing the lies about them from our rogue government officials, I couldn’t bear to see them again, both the videos and the lies. It was no surprise to see the emotional impact driving American citizens into the streets in protest.
Driving into Minneapolis Jan. 11, I was a bit apprehensive about whether or not we would encounter ICE activity or protests. It was a relief to think that everyone had taken the day off on Sunday. We did see some graffiti and signs posted saying ‘ICE out of Minnesota’, or ‘ICE-free zone’.
As with any tragedy, there is comedy, such as the guy who remained sitting in the middle of the intersection of Park Avenue and Third Street Friday evening banging on a drum, a few feet from lines of heavily armored and armed state and local law enforcement officers, near the Canopy Hotel where ICE agents reportedly were staying.
I have stayed there before. It’s a very nice hotel, although if I should stay there again, its history will be a bit haunting. Maybe we will see graffiti saying, “ICE stayed here.” However, since the Canopy is with the Hilton hotel group, we won’t be staying at any, at least for the time being.
Pitch in the dirt
Back to the baseball analogy: Just as professional umpires do a very credible job calling balls and strikes, so do most professional news media in reporting the news. They may make mistakes occasionally, just as umpires do, but they strive to be factual, objective, and unbiased. In this case ‘They’ refers to quality, mainstream new outlets and some bloggers, with one major exception.
Rupert Murdoch launched Fox in 1996 in a deliberate attempt to promote a right-wing viewpoint opposing what he perceived as a liberal bias in the news media. He saw it as an opportunity to exploit ignorance, fear, and hate simply to make lots of money. His net worth is estimated to be about $24 billion.
Over the past 30 years this immoral greed has exploded in the face of America, threatening to destroy our representative democracy. Fox has become a major conduit of propaganda for extreme right, anti-democratic, anti-American political scoundrels. Today, if a professional umpire were to call the Fox pitch about the Renae Good murder, it could only be far outside, low, in the dirt, and the truth be damned, or murdered.
Enrich’s book, Murder the Truth, is among books and research preparing for my Community Education program scheduled Feb. 25 at Jefferson Learning Center, Willmar, MN: How do we preserve and manage “freedom of speech” amid the current epidemic of misinformation and disinformation? Review the First Amendment in the context of digital media, assaults on truth, facts, and science, and explore solutions. Register online at: https://willmar.ce.eleyo.com/
