David Simon, creator of "The Wire" and "Treme," on Bill Moyers' Journal

David Simon, creator of HBO's The Wire and Treme, its forthcoming series about post-Katrina New Orleans, was the guest on Bill Moyers' PBS program on Friday night. Simon, as always, had some interesting things to say on a variety of subjects. Here's Simon on America's generational war on drugs...

BILL MOYERS: It’s also clear from your work that you think the drug war has destroyed the policemen.

DAVID SIMON: Absolutely. That’s the saddest thing in a way, is that, again, because the stats mean nothing. Because a drug arrest in Baltimore means nothing. Nothing. Real police work isn’t being done. In my city, the arrest rates for all major felonies have declined, precipitously, over the last 20 years. From murder to rape to robbery to assault.

BILL MOYERS: Because?

DAVID SIMON: Because to solve those crimes requires retroactive investigation. They have to be able to do a lot of things, in terms of gathering evidence that is substantive and meaningful police work. All you have to do to make a drug arrest is go in a guy’s pocket. You know? You don’t even need probable cause anymore in Baltimore. The guy who solves a rape or a robbery or a murder, he has one arrest stat. He’s going to court one day. The guy who has 40, 50, 60 drug arrests, even though they’re meaningless arrests, even though there’s no place to put them in the Maryland prison system, he’s going go to court 40 or 50 or 60 times. Ultimately, when it comes time to promote somebody, they look at the police computer. They’ll look and they’ll say, “This guy’s made 40 arrests last month. You only made one. He’s the Sergeant.” You know, or, “That’s the Lieutenant.” So the guys who basically play the stat game, they get promoted.

Here's Simon on the future of journalism...

BILL MOYERS: I read something you recently told "The Guardian," in London: "Oh, to be a state or local official in America..." without newspapers. "It's got to be one of the great dreams in the history of American corruption."

DAVID SIMON: Well, I was being a little hyperbolic. But-

BILL MOYERS: But it's happening. I mean, it's becoming true.

DAVID SIMON: Yes. It absolutely is, it absolutely is. To find out what's going on in my own city I often find myself at a bar somewhere taking, writing stuff down on a cocktail napkin that a police lieutenant or some school teacher tells me. Because these institutions are no longer being covered by beat reporters who are looking for the systemic. It doesn't exist anymore.

And this is not all the Internet. This was a-- you know, there's a lot of the general tone in journalism right now is that of martyrology. Of-

BILL MOYERS: Being martyrs, right.

DAVID SIMON: Yes, we were doing our job. Making the world safe for democracy. And all of a sudden, terra firma shifted, new technology. Who knew that the Internet was going to overwhelm us? I would buy that if I wasn't in journalism for the years that immediately preceded the Internet because I took the third buyout from the "Baltimore Sun." I was about reporter number 80 or 90 who left, in 1995. Long before the Internet had had its impact. I left at a time-- those buyouts happened when the "Baltimore Sun" was earning 37 percent profits.

You know, we now know this because it's in bankruptcy and the books are open. 37 percent profits. All that R&D money that was supposed to go in to make newspapers more essential, more viable, more able to explain the complexities of the world. It went to shareholders in the Tribune Company. Or the L.A. Times Mirror Company before that. And ultimately, when the Internet did hit, they had an inferior product-- that was not essential enough that they could charge online for it.

I mean, the guys who are running newspapers, over the last 20 or 30 years, have to be singular in the manner in which they destroyed their own industry. It-- it's even more profound than Detroit making Chevy Vegas and Pacers and Gremlins and believing that no self-respecting American would buy a Japanese car in 1973. That-- it's analogous up to a point, except it's not analogous in that a Nissan is a pretty good car, and a Toyota is a pretty good car. The Internet, while it's great for commentary and froth doesn't do very much first generation reporting at all. And it can't sustain that. The economic model can't sustain that kind of reporting. And to lose to that, because you didn't-- they had contempt for their own product, these people.

Here's Simon on the future of the United States...

BILL MOYERS: Do you really believe, as you said to those students at Loyola, that we're not going to make it?

DAVID SIMON: We're not going to make it as a first rate empire. And I'm not sure that that's a bad thing in the end. I mean, you know, empires end. And that doesn't mean cultures end completely and it doesn't mean that even nation states... You know, I mean, if you looked at Britain in 1952 and what was being presided over by Anthony Eden and those guys. You'd have said, "Man, you know, what's going to be left?" But, you know, Britain's still there. And they've come to terms with what they can and can't do.

Americans are still sort of in an age of delusion, I think. And a lot of our foreign policy represents that. And a lot of our-- you know, this notion that the markets were always going to go up. And that once we had invested stocks to death, we could create some new equity, out of magic. Out of nothing.

You can watch the full episode here and I highly encourage you to. It's quite an interesting discussion.