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When I asked Tina Fey how she felt about the attack at the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, I wasn't aiming for a big headline — though that's exactly what her answer produced.

She was facing a roomful of journalists at the TV Critics Association's winter press tour Wednesday, talking up her latest television series — an eccentric comedy, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, that was developed for NBC but will be unveiled to the world on Netflix.

And although she looked supremely uncomfortable every second she was answering the question, the woman who led the writers' room at Saturday Night Live when the World Trade Center was attacked on Sept. 11 seemed a perfect person to ask about the importance of satire in a free society when gunmen kill a dozen people at the offices of a magazine for the humor it has published.

"Obviously, that news is terrible and tragic and upsetting," Fey said. "When you look at that, or you look at even the controversy surrounding The Interview, it makes you remember how important free speech is, and it absolutely must be defended, and you cannot back down on free speech in any way."

I had a follow-up question: Did she ever face pressure to limit her satire? "I think the closest memory I would have of that would have been back doing [Saturday Night Live's] 'Weekend Update,' which was a long time ago," she added. "But even that was a different era. Because in a social media era where you make a joke on American TV and it can go worldwide, it's a different environment. But ... we're Americans. ... Even if it's just dumb jokes in The Interview," we have the right to make them.

Fey's answer landed in stories published everywhere from Time magazine to the Toronto Sun, Huffington Post, Glamour magazine online and BuzzFeed. And — along with heartfelt commentaries from Jon Stewart and Conan O'Brien — it offered a stark reminder that even as we hunker down inside the bubble of a press tour focused on the next six months of TV, this stuff we television critics obsess over can have a much larger meaning.

The struggle to cut through the nonsense of the industry to expose that meaning can be a central challenge at the TV critics press tour, where publicists, stars, producers and network executives are trying hard to both avoid hurtful controversy and maximize attention.

Television

TV In 2015: Late-Night Shuffles, Big Goodbyes And More

Even Fey's Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, focused on a woman trying to build a new life after she is rescued from a doomsday cult, finds its roots in a dark scenario that recalls the crimes of polygamist Warren Jeffs and the man who kidnapped several women in Ohio, Ariel Castro.

"The first several weeks that we were with the writers we spent talking about all the heaviness," said Fey, acknowledging the show had to at least acknowledge the dark side of its concept before trying to make people laugh. "In a weird [way] it reminded me of going back to SNL after 9/11 and [saying], 'OK, we're going to do comedy. We're going to find it.' "

Schmidt co-creator Robert Carlock said their show was a modern take on Mary Tyler Moore's now-classic sitcom setup: a suddenly liberated, boundlessly optimistic single woman in the city. It may say something about TV in 2015 that they are telling such a traditional tale by giving Kimmy Schmidt an outrageous personal back story. In an age where 500 streams are accessible with a mouse click, subtlety may be the new buggy whip.

As critics here try sorting through the quickly changing nature of television, one guy who helped kick-start that revolution, Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos, uses the oldest of old-school media technologies to explain how people's TV-watching habits are changing in a video-streaming age.

So far, the company is resolute in refusing to reveal specific viewership figures for each of its shows. But he did say that their data reveal that Netflix users tend to watch more than one episode of a show in one sitting and they tend to finish one show before moving on to another. Just like people read books.

Later, Sarandos told me that their data on House of Cards revealed that users reacted badly to a scene in the first episode in which Kevin Spacey's character strangled a dog. His character, powerful Congressman Frank Underwood, was also speaking to the camera, which their data showed viewers also didn't like.

And while some users who didn't like the dog-killing came back to the show, many viewers who reacted badly to Spacey's speaking to the camera — a technique that is a central feature of the series — did not, Sarandos said.

His point was that their data didn't really lead Netflix to try to change how Spacey, executive producer/director David Fincher and creator/executive producer Beau Willimon were shaping the series.

But I also noted that no matter how much technology is changing how we consume media — essentially leading consumers to expect as much content as possible, as cheaply as possible, as soon as possible — some patterns are as old as the printed word itself. Much as we change, we also stay the same.

That's a lesson worth remembering as critics here sort through press conferences outlining the next six months of TV, even while the turbulence of the real world occasionally intrudes.

Great art reveals us like nothing else. The struggle, over the next 12 days of the winter press tour, is to suss out exactly what the next few months of TV shows really say about what we value, what we hate and what moves us in a media world where boundless tragedy is just a mouse click away.

When I asked Tina Fey how she felt about the attack at the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, I wasn't aiming for a big headline — though that's exactly what her answer produced.

She was facing a roomful of journalists at the TV Critics Association's winter press tour Wednesday, talking up her latest television series — an eccentric comedy, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, that was developed for NBC but will be unveiled to the world on Netflix.

And although she looked supremely uncomfortable every second she was answering the question, the woman who led the writers' room at Saturday Night Live when the World Trade Center was attacked on Sept. 11 seemed a perfect person to ask about the importance of satire in a free society when gunmen kill a dozen people at the offices of a magazine for the humor it has published.

"Obviously, that news is terrible and tragic and upsetting," Fey said. "When you look at that, or you look at even the controversy surrounding The Interview, it makes you remember how important free speech is, and it absolutely must be defended, and you cannot back down on free speech in any way."

I had a follow-up question: Did she ever face pressure to limit her satire? "I think the closest memory I would have of that would have been back doing [Saturday Night Live's] 'Weekend Update,' which was a long time ago," she added. "But even that was a different era. Because in a social media era where you make a joke on American TV and it can go worldwide, it's a different environment. But ... we're Americans. ... Even if it's just dumb jokes in The Interview," we have the right to make them.

Fey's answer landed in stories published everywhere from Time magazine to the Toronto Sun, Huffington Post, Glamour magazine online and BuzzFeed. And — along with heartfelt commentaries from Jon Stewart and Conan O'Brien — it offered a stark reminder that even as we hunker down inside the bubble of a press tour focused on the next six months of TV, this stuff we television critics obsess over can have a much larger meaning.

The struggle to cut through the nonsense of the industry to expose that meaning can be a central challenge at the TV critics press tour, where publicists, stars, producers and network executives are trying hard to both avoid hurtful controversy and maximize attention.

Television

TV In 2015: Late-Night Shuffles, Big Goodbyes And More

Even Fey's Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, focused on a woman trying to build a new life after she is rescued from a doomsday cult, finds its roots in a dark scenario that recalls the crimes of polygamist Warren Jeffs and the man who kidnapped several women in Ohio, Ariel Castro.

"The first several weeks that we were with the writers we spent talking about all the heaviness," said Fey, acknowledging the show had to at least acknowledge the dark side of its concept before trying to make people laugh. "In a weird [way] it reminded me of going back to SNL after 9/11 and [saying], 'OK, we're going to do comedy. We're going to find it.' "

Schmidt co-creator Robert Carlock said their show was a modern take on Mary Tyler Moore's now-classic sitcom setup: a suddenly liberated, boundlessly optimistic single woman in the city. It may say something about TV in 2015 that they are telling such a traditional tale by giving Kimmy Schmidt an outrageous personal back story. In an age where 500 streams are accessible with a mouse click, subtlety may be the new buggy whip.

As critics here try sorting through the quickly changing nature of television, one guy who helped kick-start that revolution, Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos, uses the oldest of old-school media technologies to explain how people's TV-watching habits are changing in a video-streaming age.

So far, the company is resolute in refusing to reveal specific viewership figures for each of its shows. But he did say that their data reveal that Netflix users tend to watch more than one episode of a show in one sitting and they tend to finish one show before moving on to another. Just like people read books.

Later, Sarandos told me that their data on House of Cards revealed that users reacted badly to a scene in the first episode in which Kevin Spacey's character strangled a dog. His character, powerful Congressman Frank Underwood, was also speaking to the camera, which their data showed viewers also didn't like.

And while some users who didn't like the dog-killing came back to the show, many viewers who reacted badly to Spacey's speaking to the camera — a technique that is a central feature of the series — did not, Sarandos said.

His point was that their data didn't really lead Netflix to try to change how Spacey, executive producer/director David Fincher and creator/executive producer Beau Willimon were shaping the series.

But I also noted that no matter how much technology is changing how we consume media — essentially leading consumers to expect as much content as possible, as cheaply as possible, as soon as possible — some patterns are as old as the printed word itself. Much as we change, we also stay the same.

That's a lesson worth remembering as critics here sort through press conferences outlining the next six months of TV, even while the turbulence of the real world occasionally intrudes.

Great art reveals us like nothing else. The struggle, over the next 12 days of the winter press tour, is to suss out exactly what the next few months of TV shows really say about what we value, what we hate and what moves us in a media world where boundless tragedy is just a mouse click away.

A week after she was arrested over a tantrum on a tarmac in New York, former Korean Air executive Cho Hyun-ah faces charges of breaking aviation safety laws and then interfering with the inquiry into the incident.

Cho was indicted on those charges today, placing her under the threat of possibly spending years in prison. She was arrested on Dec. 30 along with two others — an airline executive and an official at the Transport Ministry — who are accused of working to undermine the investigation.

On Dec. 5, Cho forced a plane that had left its departure gate at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport to return to its gate so it could leave behind the senior steward.

Cho had insisted on the step after becoming enraged over being served macadamia nuts in a bag instead of on a plate while she was seated in first class.

Before the outburst, Cho, who has also been called by the first name Heather, had served as Korean Air's head of in-flight services. She is the daughter of airline chairman Cho Yang-ho.

The episode quickly became notorious (we called it a "nut rumpus" last month), putting new scrutiny on the privileged lives of South Korea's wealthy, and corporations' ties to government.

From the Korea Herald:

"The prosecution said it would launch an additional investigation into the Transport Ministry over suspicions that public servants had received special favors from Korean Air. Some ranking officials were accused of having their seats upgraded regularly for free."

This week, Cho's attorney told a judge that "Cho was in an excited state and may not have been aware of the fact that the plane had started to move," the Chosun Ilbo reports.

In other recent developments in the case, prosecutors said that Cho's younger sister, Cho Hyun-min, who's also a Korean Air executive, sent her embattled big sister a text message "promising to 'take revenge' on her behalf," the Ilbo says. The younger Cho apologized for that note after officials introduced the phone's contents as part of the evidence against Cho.

The AP tells us more about the charges Cho faces:

"She could face up to 15 years in prison if found guilty of all four charges she faces, according to Attorney Park Jin Nyoung, spokesman for the Korean Bar Association. Prosecutors accused her of forcing a flight to change its normal route, which Park said was the most serious charge with a maximum prison sentence of 10 years. The three other charges she faces are the use of violence against flight crew, hindering a government probe and forcing the flight's purser off the plane."

nut rage

Like many devoted fans, I jumped on the release of newly reconfigured, high-definition versions of HBO's classic cop series The Wire, binge-watching much of the show's five seasons on the HBO GO streaming service over the holidays.

And what I discovered — along with the sharper visuals — was the immediacy of the show's themes. Every episode felt as if it had been written last week, despite the fact that it debuted more than a dozen years ago and finished its run in 2008. Nowhere is that prescience on better display than the ways The Wire talks about race, culture and class.

i i

David Simon, creator of the HBO series The Wire, on the set in 2002. GAIL BURTON/ASSOCIATED PRESS hide caption

itoggle caption GAIL BURTON/ASSOCIATED PRESS

David Simon, creator of the HBO series The Wire, on the set in 2002.

GAIL BURTON/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Series creator David Simon's potent stew of on-point television offered a knowing take on the decay eating at Baltimore, and by extension, many American cities. The show highlighted the overly aggressive policing of poor black communities, the way drug-dealing became the only viable business in too many neighborhoods, the stigmatization of the poverty-stricken and the ways that middle-class black people often fell short in attempts to help African-Americans stuck in the underclass.

In fact, I'd argue The Wire has a greater resonance today than when it was originally broadcast, because so many of its messages about urban failure, policing and race have become a depressing reality.

Here are some examples of scenes that speak to issues we're grappling with now.

These Lives Matter

The scene that opens the very first episode of The Wire feels like a mission statement. A teen, nicknamed Snot Boogie, lies dead in the street. The show's protagonist, Baltimore police Detective Jimmy McNulty, gets another street kid who witnessed the shooting, to explain that the victim was killed for trying to steal money from the pot at a dice game.

First, Simon shows viewers they are entering a world where the rules are different, the language is different and the danger is obvious. But he's also focusing on a situation that many Americans pay little attention to: a young black man with a criminal past getting killed in a senseless shooting. We hear some of Snot Boogie's personal story, and we feel a pang of pity when McNulty expresses sympathy over the insulting nickname (even if he is probably exaggerating that feeling to get the witness to talk to him). Most importantly, we learn that Simon is going to make viewers care about people who many of us have preferred to ignore.

That idea is central to real-life efforts by protesters in Ferguson, who looked beyond Michael Brown's past and fought to make their fellow citizens care about him and the other young men who lose their lives in overlooked neighborhoods. Part of the message is that, even if someone is guilty of a crime, they deserve to be treated like a human being by police and society in general.

The Thin Blue Line, Beyond Black And White

Another scene from the first season features a black police official, Lt. Cedric Daniels, berating a knucklehead officer who, in a fit of temper, struck an unarmed kid. While Daniels is reprimanding the young white officer, he's also coaching him to spin his story to avoid official sanction.

Real-life protests over the grand jury decision in Eric Garner's death show concerns about this very issue — questioning whether law enforcement is capable of policing itself, and whether the justice system can be truly impartial when a police officer stands accused of assaulting or killing a black man.

The show also lays bare how and why it's so tough to fix failing police policies. Consider a scene from The Wire's third season. An experienced police major, Howard "Bunny" Colvin, decides to herd drug dealers into "free zones," areas in his district where police essentially won't enforce drug laws. The short-lived experiment reduces crime in all the other areas he policed and allows the drug trade to progress without its usual violence.

Before it all comes crashing down, Colvin explains to a young sergeant how drug enforcement tactics have disconnected police from the communities they are supposed to be protecting.

"This drug thing, it ain't police work," he says, remembering how old-school cops walked a beat, got to know their communities and learned tips from local residents that helped solve crimes. "You call something a war, and pretty soon, everybody going to be acting like warriors ... and when you're at war, you need a [expletive] enemy. And pretty soon, damn near everybody on every corner is your [expletive] enemy. And the neighborhood you're supposed to be policing, that's just occupied territory."

Real-life activists today fear those are the attitudes fueling stop-and-frisk policies where thousands of innocent young people of color are searched and sometimes detained. Look at the "you're with us or you're against us" stance many New York police have demonstrated in dealing with Mayor Bill de Blasio, and you see more evidence of the war attitude at work.

Neighborhoods Collapse, Crime Thrives

i i

Actors Jermaine Crawford, Maestro Harrell, Tristan Wilds and Julito McCullum portrayed Baltimore students in the fourth season of HBO's The Wire. Paul Schiraldi/HBO hide caption

itoggle caption Paul Schiraldi/HBO

Actors Jermaine Crawford, Maestro Harrell, Tristan Wilds and Julito McCullum portrayed Baltimore students in the fourth season of HBO's The Wire.

Paul Schiraldi/HBO

I didn't speak to Simon for this piece, but I did interview him several times during the show's run. He told me back in 2003 that the show often detailed how people land in the drug economy when traditional options fail them — whether it's the black kids in crumbling schools and struggling families in the fourth season, or the white kids trying to land a shrinking number of jobs on the city's docks in the second season.

"Whenever the economy shrugs and throws off people it doesn't need, the underground economy finds a place for them," Simon said. "You start seeing the intersection between the drug culture and the lack of meaningful work."

At a time when both incarceration rates and income inequality are reaching staggering levels, that seems to be yet another prediction Simon and The Wire nailed many years ago. Throughout the series, young people are taunted by career criminals, police and each other about the futility of pursuing education and legitimate work.

Simon has said often that The Wire is, in part, about the failure of institutions and the mediocrity of bureaucracy, even in the drug trade. But it's also about how those failures work along fissures of race and class.

As books like The New Jim Crow and documentaries like The House I Live In argue that the war on drugs has become a war on the poor and the non-white, the case for The Wire's view of an America hobbled by the desire for order at any cost — especially if that cost mostly falls on poor black and brown people — seems seriously prescient.

eric deggans

Baltimore

The Wire

David Simon

HBO