Interview with David Simon of The Wire

Long interview over at Vice Magazine with David Simon, creator of The Wire:

Yes. Newspapers have less and less ambition and are demanding less and less of themselves as arbiters of what is actually important, of what our problems are and how we’re addressing them. The Wire was trying to say, at the end, “Look, if anything in the first four seasons struck a nerve with you, don’t think for a moment that anyone’s going to address themselves to it—least of all the watchdogs of society—because their teeth have been taken out.” They’ve done it to themselves. We had to say that last because ultimately we were saying: “This is the America you built and if you think the first alarm is ever going to go off in any sense, guess again.”

Well worth it.

Hat tip to Signal vs. Noise.

Life Imitating Art Imitating Life

In this Washington Post piece, David Simon (creator of HBO's The Wire) rails righteously against the Baltimore Police Department's questionable actions and the failure of the enervated Baltimore Sun to hold them to account.

In an American city, a police officer with the authority to take human life can now do so in the shadows, while his higher-ups can claim that this is necessary not to avoid public accountability, but to mitigate against a nonexistent wave of threats. And the last remaining daily newspaper in town no longer has the manpower, the expertise or the institutional memory to challenge any of it.

Read it. (And watch it, in case you haven't.)