Imagine you wanted to produce a PBS "American Experience" show on a fascinating multicultural city like New York over several centuries. And you decide to totally focus on the most miserable experiences of one of its many ethnic groups, let's say Puerto Ricans.
Now hire as talking heads only one native New Yorker who is not Puerto Rican and a fine minor writer, some Puerto Ricans no one has ever heard of or from before, and the rest "experts" from the Pacific Northwest. Forget covering anything that may have happened in the city that doesn't have a Puerto Rican perspective. Are you beginning to get the picture?
In Ives/Ferrari treatment, the ethnic group to be sniveled over happened to be blacks and the city was New Orleans. They achieved a miracle. They made one of the most interesting cities in the world a crashing bore, got most of the history and many of their facts wrong, and missed 80% of the story. They should retitle it "Alan Sharpton's New Orleans" As a New Orleanian it finally got hilariously funny to watch. As a media professional, I couldn't believe PBS accepted delivery of this lousy job.