The title of Rob Brotherton’s new book, Bad News: Why We Fall for Fake News, published this year in May, suggests a timeliness, and an implicit understanding of this human failing. Mr Brotherton plunges into a historically renowned example of fake news, in the very first line of the first chapter of the book: “Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our program of dance music to bring you a special bulletin from the Intercontinental Radio News.”
The special news bulletin on Sunday, October 30, 1938, was about tentacled extraterrestrials landing on earth, around 20 miles from Princeton in the United States.