Cmv: i think that, no matter the quality of journalism, those who only know about a story through the news are too ignorant to have a valuable opinion.:
I think the proof is in the pudding: take something you consider yourself truly knowledgable about and look at the news coverage.  You'll find it partial at best.  You'll encounter people who "read an article" related your field and understand how naive they sound.  Journalists can only provide so much context and it's usually never enough to give a layman a foothold in the subject matter.  

This is not to say that news isn't valuable.  But it does mean that if you read the paper every day and gravitate toward the Ukraine stories while having virtually no historical background, having never been to the Ukraine or Russia, never done any research or met people from the cultures involved, you should speak, think and feel with in an extremely humble tone about the subject.  In fact it would be more wise to ask questions than to profess any opinion at all.

