Sean Penn described his interview with the drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán as a "failure" because it distracted attention away from the war on drug, NBC News reported.
Speaking during an interview on CBS' "60 Minutes," Penn said he was well aware of the risk he and El Chapo by holding the meeting but felt the need to do because he wanted to start a conversation about the "drug problem." Instead, he noted, people mostly talked about El Chapo as a popular figure.
Penn acknowledged that he gave Guzmán — whom Mexican authorities recaptured Jan. 8, months after he escaped from a maximum-security prison through an elaborate tunnel under his cell — the right to kill the Rolling Stone article, an arrangement many journalists would find unsavory.
Penn called the attitude of professional journalists "an incredible hypocrisy and an incredible lesson in just how much they don't know and how disserved we are."
