Are we Americans drowning in opinions so much that it is hard to tell the news from opinions?

And is this damaging the national debate?

Who hasn’t heard an opinion on some national issue where they had missed that initial nugget of news when it first came out, then had trouble going online to find the original news stories? The search results in miles of opinions. Why? It is because we live in a world of so many cheap and instant opinions that fewer and fewer people are getting their hands on hard news stories.

Also, who hasn’t heard a comedian like Jon Stewart, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Conan O’Brien joke about news — news you hadn’t heard or read from more objective sources first? Who hasn’t heard news from talk-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Oprah Winfrey, Bill O’Reilly or Michael Medved — news you hadn’t heard or read from more objective sources first?

Look at Nancy Grace on CNN. When viewers gets news from her, they get a blender full of some facts and some opinions, especially her opinion. There is no clear delineation to viewers that this program is opinion, not news. At least with talk shows and comedians, this is more clear.

Radio used to be a place people could tune to when they wanted to hear news as it happens. Now, radio will give you loads of opinions, even while the news is happening.

For instance, on Wednesday morning, Minnesota Public Radio had a reporter at the Capitol who, on air, began to describe the scene as Gov. Mark Dayton was about to sign the budget bills that would reopen state shutdown. It was riveting, but the anchor cut him off so she could interview an expert on what exactly is “good government,” even though moments earlier she herself described the signing as “historic” for Minnesota.

Why couldn’t that expert’s opinion wait at least until the signing was completed?

It was yet another example of a news outlet favoring opinions over news. They think consumers prefer opinions. Instant opinions.

We disagree.

With so many opinions — radio, TV, email, blogs, columns, editorials and so forth — clouding the national, state and regional discussions, U.S. voters hear less and less from the elected officials themselves. People too often hear about our leaders’ ideas and words through the fuzzy filter of other people’s opinions.

News serves the purpose of putting the tilted ways of political speaking into everyday language.

Opinion, while valuable, tends to put political speech into more tilt, not less.

The great thing about newspapers is that, to this day, it remains painless to tell which parts are opinion and which parts are news. And newspapers — despite staffing cuts and despite trends elsewhere in the media world to go with more opinions and less news — continue to bank their futures on being the place to get the hard news that so many other media outlets are lacking.

Perhaps that is one reason the newspapers are succeeding so well on the Internet. When people want news, when they want to confirm if something really is happening, they don’t go to some website for a TV or radio station or some guy’s blog. They overwhelmingly visit a newspaper website. That’s the place where reporters are dedicated to serious journalism.

For the sake of the country, we only wish more media outlets saw the importance of news in society in the same way. American politics seemed to work better when the news was heard first, then people could absorb and form their own thoughts about it, then later be persuaded or dissuaded by opinions.