Last week, we noted CNN This Morning host Audie Cornish employing Katie Couric's infamous "some say" technique [from back in her Today show days] of putting in the mouths of others something liberal she believed, but wanted to avoid explicitly expressing as her own view.
In Audie's case, the former NPR host apparently wanted to preserve a patina of impartiality regarding ICE. And so she said that, talking with people after the anti-ICE church invasion in St. Paul, MN:
"I heard over and over again, I feel like [protesting in] the church is too far. I feel like I feel like it could it be something that the administration can use against the protest movement."
It seems that Audie was worried that the church invasion took things too far, and could be hurting her cherished anti-ICE movement. But Cornish didn't want to express that as her own sentiment, and so attributed it to hearing it "over and over again" from others.
All things considered [the NPR show Audie used to host!], it was a relatively benign use of the Couric "some say" technique.
But on today's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough employed the Couric tactic in an utterly more vile way. Speaking of the shooting death of anti-ICE protester Alex Pretti, Scarborough said:
"Many people were describing [it] as an execution-style shooting."
Joe, if you want to accuse ICE of the execution-style shooting of Alex Pretti, have the decency and guts to say so yourself, instead of putting it in the mouths of "many people." The bare minimum that journalistic integrity required was to name names of some of those "many people." But you failed to clear even that low bar. Shame on you.
Note: The show opened with a clip of Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara boasting that, in contrast with ICE, in the last year his force had confiscated 900 weapons and arrested hundreds of violent offenders, "and we didn't shoot anyone."
Maybe so. Then again, the Minneapolis PD didn't have to contend with mobs of protesters screaming, using cars to obstruct their operations, blowing whistles, trying to "de-arrest" people, or ICE Watch "rapid responders" tracking federal agents, their movements and their vehicles in an AirTable database called "MN ICE PLATES."
Here's the transcript.
MS NOW
Morning Joe
1/26/26
6:00 am ETMINNEAPOLIS POLICE CHIEF BRIAN O'HARA: People have had enough. This is the third shooting now in less than three weeks. The Minneapolis Police Department went the entire year last year recovering about 900 guns from the street, arresting hundreds and hundreds of violent offenders, and we didn't shoot anyone.
. . .
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Well, Mika, as we saw last week, and I suspect the numbers this week will be even more horrific, the numbers of Americans approving of ICE's actions plummeted even last week after the first killing of Renee Good. You had people in the low 30s approving and in the 60s, mid 60s disapproving. Those numbers are obviously going in the opposite direction.
So yeah, it's hard to believe that with 63% of Americans disapproving of ICE and only 36% approving before the shooting this weekend that many people were describing as an execution-style shooting.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: The second.
SCARBOROUGH: The second. Again, Republicans have to do something here. The White House has to do something.
