Because journalists are good at nothing if not navel-gazing, there has been a whole lot of hand-wringing over this final season of “The Wire’s” less-than-flattering depiction of the news media – in particular, print journalism; even more particularly, the Baltimore Sun, where series creator David Simon toiled before his editors’ blasé attitudes sent him bolting for the greener pastures of the TV industry.

(Hey, if I had worked at a newspaper that had disillusioned me so thoroughly that I had no alternative than to accept those exponentially higher paychecks from the TV industry, with all those extra zeroes at the end, I don’t think I’d be as bitter as Simon.)

When it comes to trenchant analysis of the entire social strata, “The Wire” makes Tom Wolfe look like a correspondent for the Weekly Reader. Each season, Simon has made a trenchant point that’s utterly depressing but just as utterly unassailable. Season 1: The war on drugs is unwinnable. Season 2: The working-class is screwed. Season 3: Politics on any level bastardizes everything. Season 4: Our educational system is broken.

And now, season 5: The media, buffeted by economic woes and corporate greed, is no longer doing its central, crucial job, which is to inform the public of issues important to them, of harms being done to them, of whatever matters in an increasingly complex social system, but on the other hand, they do keep you up to date on what’s going on with Britney Spears pretty well.

So some critics, who lauded “The Wire” for its verisimilitude when eviscerating other levels of society, tiptoed away from this season’s criticism of their own industry, perhaps fearing their editors would interpret approval as criticism of their own bosses. As if they hadn’t personally sat in on meetings where they had been told, “We’ll have to do more with less.”

Obviously, Simon’s life as a journalist sticks in his craw to this day. He recently wrote an essay stomping all over ostensibly idealistic journalists:

“Isn't the news itself still valuable to anyone? In any format, through any medium -- isn't an understanding of the events of the day still a salable commodity? Or were we kidding ourselves? Was a newspaper a viable entity only so long as it had classifieds, comics and the latest sports scores? …

“Newsprint itself is an anachronism. But was there a moment before the deluge of the Internet when news organizations might have better protected themselves and their product? When … their Web sites would, in fact, charge for providing a rare and worthy service? …

“I did not encounter a sustained period in which anyone endeavored to spend what it would actually cost to make the Baltimore Sun the most essential and deep-thinking and well-written account of life in central Maryland. The people you needed to gather for that kind of storytelling were ushered out the door, buyout after buyout. …

“Soon enough, when technology arrived to test the loyalty of longtime readers and the interest of new ones, the newspaper would be offering to cover not more of the world and its issues, but less of both -- and to do so with younger, cheaper employees, many of them newspaper-chain transplants with no organic sense of the city's history. …

“In place of comprehensive, complex and idiosyncratic coverage, readers of even the most serious newspapers were offered celebrity and scandal, humor and light provocation -- the very currency of the Internet itself. …

“And now, no profits. No advertising. No new readers. Now, the great gray ladies are reduced to throwing what's left of their best stuff out there on the Web, unable to charge enough for online advertising, or anything at all for the journalism itself.”

What hacks Simon off is that all of us suffer when the media is compromised. For example, just think what might have happened if just one or two newspapers in Washington or New York had seriously investigated White House claims that we had to attack Iraq in order to save the world (Knight Ridder reporters did, but since that chain doesn’t have a paper in a giant media center, they were desultorily ignored). If people aren’t well-informed by a fervent watchdog, all those other things the show has discussed – lousy war on drugs, pulverized middle class, corrupt politicians, crummy schools – are allowed to continue unabated. Oh, wait, they have continued unabated. Well, guess that proves Simon’s point, huh?

Nonetheless, Simon gives props to his former employer, the Sun, for allowing his show to shoot in their offices even though they absolutely knew he’d slag them (the season’s most empathetic character is Gus, a Sun city editor (played by Clark Johnson, who’s directed several episodes of the series) who’s intrepid and intelligent but is wryly wrathful toward the direction his paper is taking):

"‘What The Sun did was gracious and brave and typical of the who-gives-a-damn indifference of a good newspaper,’ Simon says. … “(T)here are journalists who are doing very good work at the Baltimore Sun and trying extremely hard to put out a good newspaper every day. And that they should feel no personal connection to the fiction [“The Wire” offers, such as featuring a Jayson Blair-style reporter who makes stuff up as he goes along] as they attempt to do that job. They certainly shouldn't feel any shame.’"

Anyway, that’s a long preface to a short but spoiler-ridden look at Sunday’s episode.

So far this season, McNulty (Dominic West) has, perhaps due to his relapse into alcoholism or perhaps due to his dedication to his job (those two entities being so hard to distinguish these days), opted to create a serial killer that will force the Mayor’s office to funnel more money into the police force, and even wise old Lester (Clarke Peters) has decreed it an OK idea. McNulty, fearing the serial killer thing was losing steam in the local media, declared, “We have to kill again.”

This week, the homeless serial-killer story explodes, and we come to the storyline that’s hacking off journalists the most: Templeton (Thomas McCarthy), who got snubbed at a job interview last week by the Washington Post, blows a reaction story from homeless people (“Where am I going to find homeless people?” he asks cluelessly, as if he’s never seen one wandering the streets; “Not at home,” Gus replies drolly) and then takes matters into his own hands: He fakes a story about a homeless man (hey, who can fact-check it?).

And then, he really crosses the line: He fakes a phone call from the serial killer and of course his editors make a huge deal of the story. (Gus, of course, doesn’t trust the guy.)

Templeton’s fiction makes him a star, and McNulty, bemused, decides to run with it. They’re both making stuff up out of whole cloth, and they both need each other at this point, even if Templeton doesn’t realize what he’s gotten himself into. But the story has the desired effect: Police overtime is reinstated, and Lester gets his desired wiretap in his search for Stanfield – yes, five episodes into the season, the title character finally appears.

Beadie (current Oscar nominee Amy Ryan), McNulty’s exquisitely suffering girlfriend, sick of his alcoholism and philandering, finally considers kicking him to the curb.

Oh, and there’s a big shootout.

While McNulty’s dubious actions were brought on by his being distraught over the dysfunction of the system, Templeton’s are extreme, self-serving and stupid. They’ll quite likely end his career (or, as in the case of Jayson Blair, land him a deal for a book that no one'll want to read). This feels like a bit of a plotting misstep, albeit not a fatal one, since it dovetails so neatly into McNulty’s falsehoods.

And even though “The Wire” is the best thing going on TV, still people refuse to watch. Maybe David Simon is wrong. Maybe people just don’t want to know what the heck is going on. Maybe newspapers should just focus on sports scores and the daily Sudoku.

- “The Wire:” 9 p.m. Sunday (and a whole bunch of other times), HBO.