Documentary Review: 'The Central Park Five: A Film by Ken Burns & David McMahon & Sarah Burns'
On November 23, 2012, the 300 member stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) aired The Central Park Five: A Film by Ken Burns & David McMahon & Sarah Burns, a two-hour-long documentary about the five teenaged black and Latino boys who were arrested and coerced into "confessions" by overzealous New York City detectives and prosecutors in the infamous 1989 "Central Park jogger case." Co-written and directed by documentarian Ken Burns, his daughter Sarah, and producer/director David McMahon, The Central Park Five is a searing and often infuriating case study of racial prejudice, sloppy police work, wrongful prosecution, and the role of mass media in perpetuating a miscarriage of justice. The film, which had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival several months before it aired on PBS, tells the story of the long ordeal experienced by New York City teens Anton McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Kevin Wise, and Yusuf Salaam after a...