Spring Break
Creator of 'The Wire' speaks at Goucher
Sarah Weissman
Issue date: 10/8/08 Section: A & E
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Simon, 48, expressed his belief that Americans are lowering their standards on a variety of issues and that these institutions are merely living up to those low standards.
He addressed issues such as the state and national government's reaction to Hurricane Katrina and the quality of journalism.
The Baltimore native also mentioned state officials' and the police force's reaction to crime in Baltimore.
"If you care about where we're going," he said, "if you get a sense of how big the problems are and how little we can believe in the process of identifying the problems and speaking bluntly yo ourselves about the problems, how can you not be angry?"
Simon carried the themes of awareness and deception throughout his speech.
He discussed repercussions when a state lacks what he considers an aggressive and reliable news source.
Simon believes that the Baltimore Sun's quality is a product of what he perceives as journalism's downhill slant; the only papers he claims to reads are the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Simon said that the media, and information media rely on, are incredibly skewed.
Exemplifying his point, he referred to the war in Iraq and standardized testing in Baltimore County schools. Scores rose in third and fifth grade, and in middle school.
"Those kids didn't sustain in the seventh and ninth grade because they didn't solve any problem -they just taught the test."
Further emphasizing his point, Simon recalled how Governor O'Malley aimed to decrease crime.
"Well, how do you make crime go down? You redefine crime!" Simon said, as he punctuated his words with hand gestures that were equally as terse.
"So robberies became larcenies, aggravated assaults became common assaults and lo and behold, crime went down 40 percent!"
He returned to the issue of newspaper quality by faulting papers for not opposing or exposing the new crime vocabulary.
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