The great tortoise hoax

False reports of the death of the world’s oldest living land animal reminds us how quickly misinformation can spread.

We live in an age of fake news. The scourge of online misinformation, combined with a media class that prioritises ideological narratives over the truth, means that most of us now routinely check multiple accounts of the same event to cobble together the reality behind the agenda. But yesterday the phenomenon of fake news hit a new low. For it was widel…