Fancy being an expert?

It's a great job, I am told, prestigious, lucrative and - here is the really good bit - easy to get.

That is because - alas - you really don't need to know what you are talking about to be a talking head.

Yes, everybody is an expert, at least in this age of 24 hour rolling TV news, instant reaction online newspaper journalism and round-the-clock tweeting.

And this is particularly true in some of the big international stories in the headlines right now.

Take last weekend's weekend's Greferendum.

Ever since Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his leftist anti-austerity alliance took power in January our screens have been filled with a succession of informed commentators on all things Hellenic.

Well, supposedly informed. Some of the people waxing apparently knowledgeably about Mr Tsipras couldn't pronounce his name or that of his party, Syriza.

This tells us just how low the threshold of "expertise" in some parts of the media has fallen.

If you can't say Syriza (clue, it's not Suh - ree -tsa), you can't speak Greek. And if you can't speak Greek, you are not an expert on Greece.

True, not every expert voice on recent events in the cradle of democracy had to be a bona fide Hellenist.

This nightmarishly complex story needed specialist commentary on everything from global finance to wider European politics.

And, of course, they didn't all need to be Greek speakers.

But here is the scary bit: the fact some of these people didn't know how to say Syriza meant they had probably never spoken to a Greek about the issue.

Those heads on telly might have been talking; but they hadn't been listening first. This isn't unusual.

Politicians do it too.

Last week, for example, the SNP joined the perfectly respectable international drive to call terror group Islamic State by its Arabic acronym, Daesh.

They did so, they announced in a press release, because Daesh refers to "one who sows discord". Cue groans from Arabists.

The acronym merely sounds a bit like another word that does have that meaning, said linguists who have been scoffing at the oversimplification of the ISIS naming debate for the best part of six months.

As somebody who isn't an expert in anything, and who is particularly clueless about Greece or Islamic State, this trend worries me.

Because helping true specialists - even the squabbling variety who disagree among themselves - to condense their insights in to words the rest of us can understand is, I'd say, one of the most important roles of journalism. We don't always get it right, but we try.

The Herald, in our Agenda slot, offers the chance for officials, academics and practitioners to explain complex issues, including overseas ones. Websites like The Conversation UK give voice to those in the know. But we need to be more rigorous in weeding out the foreign affairs charlatans.

Why? Because understanding other nations is much harder than we imagine, even in this age of global information, and low-cost holiday flights. Don't believe me? Then watch how experts and journalists from other countries report on Scotland. As the independence referendum campaign began there were several news items suggesting the UK's nuclear subs were based on an island called Clyde. By the end of the process that island became a river. But it changed its name to Clive.