Ignorance is an "opinion-ridden free-for-all"; Awareness is the same thing, just with being honest about what are just opinions

I spotted this little quote from Arthur Sulzberger Jr. on Romenesko today:

Poynter Online - Romenesko: "ON BLOGGERS: 'Some are professional journalists, but the vast majority of them are just folks with something on their minds. While some of these individuals are making a serious and thoughtful contribution to our global dialogue, too many simply contribute to the sense that we're in the midst of an opinion-ridden free-for-all.'"

Don't have time right now to read the whole article, but this snippet raised my ire just a little.

How many is too many? Is there a limit on how many people throw silly opinions around?

Blogging is like anything else, some good/some bad and a whole lot of responsibility on the part of both the person putting out blogs and the folks reading them. If a bunch of people want to run around and say silly things on the internet, perfect. That is part of its beauty. The "opinion-ridden free-for-all" on the internet wouldn't matter at all if the print and TV journalists were just a little more scrupulous and thorough.

The only shame about people throwing around opinions is that opinion content takes up most of the space on our cable 'news' stations. It is their taking up the less classy of the blog banter which clouds the air. Most of the faces that we get our daily information from spew out more opinions than news. And too many of them do this under the guise of being objective.

Journalists should be reading blogs, but they should know that their job is to separate the wheat from the chafe before passing on in their medium. Right now, the talking-head opinion-pushers are just parroting as truth who ever is screaming the loudest or cherry-picking things that reinforce whatever their cause is. The plank in your eye, people! Come on.