Instant expertise

'We have a responsibility to protect the Yazidis of Iraq,' is the headline of a leader column in the New Statesman, an attitude mirrored across the British media. 'Yazidi' is the word of the moment, and suddenly we're knee-deep in opinions on, and analyses of, this hitherto unheard-of people.

Unheard of? Well, pretty much, if you broadly rely - as most of us do - on the media's portrayal of the world.

I just looked up on the News Bank data base, and in the first two weeks of August 2014, there were 324 mentions of the word in British newspapers. That's compared to the first seven months of the year, when there were just five such mentions. Looking further back: in 2013 there were two references to Yazidis, in 2013 three, in 2011 four, and in 2010 four.

Which, of course, doesn't stop any of us from airing our own opinions in homes and pubs, on the internet and radio phone-ins, as though we have any real idea at all what we're talking about. It's wonderful how quickly we can all become experts.