Ctrl Alt Delete: How Politics and the Media Crashed Our Democracy – review

Tom Baldwin's account of the abusive relationship with the truth in media and politics is lucid, punchy and often funny

Let's begin with the parable of the triple-breasted woman. A couple of years in advance of Donald Trump's arrival at the White House and before the term "fake news" had caught on, a Florida woman calling herself Jasmine Tridevil made headlines around the world by posting pictures of herself with a third breast. Claiming she had undergone this unusual implant surgery in the hope of landing a reality TV show, her story was propagated by a spectrum of media including New York magazine, BuzzFeed, the New York Post, the Toronto Sun, Fox News, CBS Tampa, the Daily Mirror and the Daily Telegraph.

As you will have surmised, the story was an invention by a woman whose website boasted that it was the "provider of internet hoaxes". Tom Baldwin remarks: "The reason why so many respectable news organisations would run it anyway is because it was flying around the internet and the prospect of a few hundred thousand clicks was too tempting to waste time with checks." This is one of many arresting examples that he cites in support of his contention that the battle for our eyeballs has debased a click-chasing media and led to even worse from vote-chasing politicians.