This seems like a straw man, the issue isn't that opinion journalism should be abolished, the issue is that it is overprevalent. News has become too much a mixt

This seems like a straw man, the issue isn't that opinion journalism should be abolished, the issue is that it is overprevalent. News has become too much a mixture of pack-like reporting of one exciting incident after another (often stories with little value beyond entertainment), and opinion. In order to form a judgement about something, you have to have experience of it, and data journalism is, or should be, about allowing people to understand the reality of what is actually occurring beyond their immediate bubble. i.e. at its best, it should be 'empty', and as close as possible to an observation. Once you have at least some factual basis, then you can start forming opinions, or forming judgements about the validity of other people's opinions, and it is at that stage that opinion journalism ceases to be about providing superficially plausible rationalizations for your ideological preconceptions, and begins to be about finding some structure to make sense of the nature of the problems, and the nature of the possible solutions.