The "sort of" Epidemic

There seems to be an epidemic of randomly inserting "sort of" into spoken sentences. The perpetrators are news reporters, political pundits, scientists, analysts and anyone else who I've seen on TV lately. It seems to be relegated to the well educated population and makes absolutely no kind of sense to me at all. The phrase does not enhance the sentence in which it used in any way. It's a sort of destruction of the economy of words. Has anyone else noticed this? Does it sort of grate on your nerves?