'Karen' podcast exposes media flaws

Over a year ago, in May 2020, New Yorker Amy Cooper briefly became the most hated woman in America — a living symbol of racism — after a viral video showed her making a 911 call in Central Park and frantically shouting that she was being threatened by "an African-American man." The man, Christian Cooper, was a bird-watcher who had asked her to leash her dog as required by law. Amy Cooper was seen as the ultimate "Karen," the entitled white woman who bullies others, especially racial minorities, using authority figures as her weapon.

Now, a new podcast by former New York Times editor Bari Weiss and journalist Kmele Foster argues that Amy Cooper — who lost her job and had to go into hiding — was unfairly maligned by biased reporting that omitted important details. While their report may not fully exonerate her, it raises important questions about media narratives, particularly on racial issues.

Reports at the time stressed that Amy was clearly making a false accusation: Christian was standing several feet away and asking her not to come closer. Yet a few people countered that, by his own admission on Facebook, Christian had acted in an arguably intimidating way before the filming: When Amy wouldn’t leash the dog, he told her, "Look, if you’re going to do what you want, I’m going to do what I want, but you’re not going to like it," and then held out a dog treat to lure her dog away. A woman alone with a man in an isolated area of the park, some said, could legitimately feel threatened.

The Weiss/Foster report aired earlier this month on Weiss’ podcast, "Honestly," adds some new background — for instance, that Christian Cooper had a history of aggressively confronting leash scofflaws in the park, a fact he had discussed in a recorded Zoom community meeting shortly before his run-in with Amy Cooper. A man named Jerome Lockett — who is also black — gave a statement to the media last year saying that he had been "aggressively" threatened by Christian Cooper in the park and that he thought Amy Cooper "may have genuinely been afraid for her life."

The podcast also reveals the audio of both sides of Amy Cooper’s 911 call, showing that the call was breaking up and the operator repeatedly said she couldn’t hear her. This, Foster suggests, accounts for Amy’s repeated reference to Christian’s race — and for her rising panic, widely interpreted as a performance "weaponizing" her distress.

One sticking point still remains: Before the phone call, Amy told Christian that she was going to call the cops and tell them an "African-American man" was threatening her. Mentioning his race to the dispatcher may have been descriptive, as she claims. Mentioning it to Christian is hard to interpret as anything other than racial intimidation, and her attempt to explain it in her interview with Foster is unconvincing. Even if she was acting out of fear, it was still an ugly (and yes, racist) thing to do.

Perhaps the appropriate conclusion is that both Coopers were behaving badly. But it’s hard to disagree with Weiss and Foster that the reaction (which included a torrent of death threats to Amy Cooper) was wildly disproportionate and that the media mishandled the story. This is yet another lesson in approaching viral "outrage" videos with caution: investigate before you condemn.

Opinions expressed by Cathy Young, a contributing editor at Reason magazine, are her own.

By Cathy Young

Cathy Young is a writer for The Bulwark.