Tremendous viewer response to PBS documentary "Inside the Meltdown"

PBS ombudsman Michael Getler notes that the non-profit network received more than 500 responses from viewers in the aftermath of showing its documentary “Inside the Meltdown” about the current economic crisis.

Getler writes, “In general, I found this documentary very much in keeping with the timely, high-quality work of Frontline and Producer Michael Kirk. It comes across as a thriller that captures the house-of-cards nature of huge companies whose stability so many took for granted, and of the powerful internal ideological struggle that accompanied the frantic search for a solution that might work.

“The dramatic music and camera work worked for me because this was dramatic and real and it isn’t over. The intense, black and white close-ups of former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and current Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke captured the strain on these two suddenly very public men faced with the beginnings of a cascading financial catastrophe that seemed to defy control.

“The use of experienced financial reporters and economists, including former Reagan adviser Martin Feldstein, to move the narrative along was extremely helpful, I thought, although it might have been better to leave it to them rather than bring in economists who are also op-ed page columnists such as the New York Times‘ Paul Krugman, who offered a distracting put-down of Paulson.”

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