The expansion of the 'Net has taken journalism in a direction that has me mildly perplexed.

Not many years ago, columnists such as I would bash out their thousand words or so, get it to the editor and wait a couple of days to read the end result, which would be more or less what had been written, the more or less being dependent on gusto with which the blue pencil had been wielded.

You would then let a few days go by and glance at the Letters to the Editor page, to see if you had annoyed anyone enough to provoke him or her into being foolhardy enough to enter into an argument with someone who has a thousand or so words at his disposal every week.

Today, the gratification is virtually instantaneous and the reactions come in thick and fast when nerves are touched. Sometimes the comments are even more entertaining than the original column, though equally often, the comments betray their makers to be bigoted types prone to ad hominem diatribes rather than thoughtful debate.

Oh well, it all goes to contribute to the general fun and games, i suppose.

News journalism, as distinct from opinionating (and that's a new word) also used to provoke reactions in print every so often, though not as much. It (news journalism) was also less immediate than it is now, with electronic newspapers broadcasting the news as it happens, ironically tending to leave behind the very media that threatened the papers a few short years ago.

Today, if something happens, I tend to surf over to timesofmalta.com via my mobile or iPad or whatever happens to be handy and I don't even think about checking the radio or telly That might be a reflection of the pretty abysmal standards in those outlets, now that I think about it, but frankly, even on the international front, too much Sky or CNN comes very quickly.

Not only is the news quick to hit the 'Net, so are the comments and opinions of the readers. Read any news item and you're guaranteed to get a whole slew of know-it-alls telling us precisely what happened, why it happened and way more than that.

This trend is pronounced when traffic or other such incidents are reported. Hardly has the mess been cleaned up before you can read what "Joe Abela" has to say, said Mr Abela (a fictitious Abela, let me hasten to add) generally basing himself on the couple of lines of news report, from which he manages to extrapolate not only the cause of the accident but also whose fault it was and why - if he had anything to do with it - it wouldn't have happened.

If you want a really topical example of this, check out the story on timesofmalta.com about that Algerian plane that had a problem with its undercarriage. One character, whose only aeronautic qualification that I can perceive is that he once used to work for Air Malta (but not in any technical capacity whatsoever) went to far as to write that an undercarriage malfunction in such circumstances is nothing, implying pretty clearly that this was a case of cockpit panic.

If this wasn't pathetic enough, there were even people who agreed with him.

It's not always so funny, though. Some of the comments you get after fatal accidents are so crass that you wonder whether the people who make them have even a vestigial sense of shame or compassion. I'm not talking about the expressions of sympathy and similar platitudes that have the saving grace of being meant kindly, it's the pronouncements from on high about who is at fault and why that grate, especially when its clear that the people making them have about as much real knowledge about the subject as I have about, say, the inner workings of the internal combustion engine.

Many people seem to labour under the impression that simply because they have the right to an opinion, they have an equal right to broadcast it and - even more weirdly - have it taken seriously.

It is true that everyone has the right to have an opinion, but that's as far as it goes, folks: your opinion is only worth anything if it is based on knowledge and analysis. If it is not, and especially if is actually a product of your own inadequacies and preconceptions, then it's not worth anything and you'd be doing yourself and your image as a smug know-it-all a favour if you'd just can it.

Which is why I think that it's about time the open-mike policy that the electronic papers (now there's an oxymoron) have adopted to date might need a bit of revision.