TV preview: Frontline shines in telling Madoff story
While much of the talk at the PBS Showcase conference in Baltimore today is sure to be about the changes at The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, public TV's other great journalistic institution, Frontline, is the one to watch tonight as it presents "The Madoff Affair."
Is there a harder hitting, more thorough enterprise and investigative operation anywhere on TV? At it's best, 60 Minutes is in the same league. But no one else.
And before you start talking about mainstream media and old media and blah, blah, blah, do yourself a favor, just sit down and watch tonight as correspondent and producer Martin Smith takes viewers into the deepest and most lucid explanations delivered anywhere in the media as to how Bernard L. Madoff bilked so many out of an estimated $65 billion.
One of the most impressive aspects of Frontline is that it takes no prisoners. It uses one of Madoff's earliest accountants, Micahel Bienes, as an informant early on in the report. And Bienes is great. He has details, facts and he talks like a member of Tony Soprano's crew.
When asked about the early days as a Madoff co-conspirator, Bienes says, It is was "easy-peezie, like a money machine." When asked why he didn't press Madoff on how they kept making such alleged big returns for their clients and fortunes for themselves, he says, "Why would I ask him? I wouldn't understaqnd it if he explained it."
But just when the viewer starts believing everything Bienes says, Smith starts taking apart some of the accountant's more self-serving claims that are clearly lies. Everybody gets investigated in a Frontline piece, and Bienes gets no break for providing some good information. Frontline wants only the truth -- in a journalistic, what-do-we-know-to-be-true-at-this-point-in-time sense of that word.
And, oh boy, does Frontline rip the SEC for its utter lack of regulatory oversight. The SEC's performance in the Madoff affair is everything you would expect of a government agency that ambraced the less-government-is-best-in-business philosophy of the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush era.
One complaint: I wish Frontline had drilled deeper into the complicated cultural issue of Jewish idenity and how it related to Madoff's credibility. It did seem that some Jewish investers gave him undue credibility because he is Jewish as well. And he certainly preyed on Jews.
That is a fascinating in-group dynamic that needs further exploration because I believe it applies to all in-groups -- racial, ethnic, religious and cultural. And we just don't like talking about it.
But that sort of analysis is not Frontline's forte. Hard-charging, truth-finding investigations and enterprise reporting is. And we should treasure the show, because there are not many outfits like Frontline left anywhere in American jorunalism.
"The Madoff Affair" airs at 9 tonight on MPT.
Comments
He was definitely wrong in what he did to all of those investors. Sometimes I think we are harder on those of our own racial, ethnic or religious backgrounds. I'm not sure why, this might be interesting thing to figure out.
Sherry Tellitocci
Posted by: Sherry Tellitocci | May 12, 2009 2:38 PM
Hi - I couldn't find a place on the page to email you about a question I had, so I'm using this space.
Is "The Riches" with Minnie Driver and Eddie Izzard returning any time soon, or is it over?
I am pretty sure it is done. But I will check today and post it. Please check back.Z
Posted by: bob fleishman | May 12, 2009 4:35 PM
Watched "The Madoff Affair" last night and thought it was terrific even if I don't feel very sorry for all those rich people who got wiped out. Example: the couple who have been refuced to living in an apartment. The view from their balcony is far better whan what most of us see when we look out the windows of our residences.
And the man in that couple is one of Madoff's former accountants. I am glad you liked the report. I think Frontline is terrific. Thanks. Z
Posted by: Mary | May 13, 2009 8:08 AM
Wow Mary--so it's ok for someone who worked hard and made a lot of money and lived in a big house to get wiped out but NOT ok for someone that hasn't made a lot of money to get wiped out, whether he worked hard or not? What a miserable, jealous life you must live of all that are more fortunate in life than you.
Posted by: Not Johnny U | May 13, 2009 11:25 PM