Fake news is fooling more conservatives than liberals. Why?

“Doctors need three qualifications: to be able to lie and not get caught; to pretend to be honest; and to cause death without guilt.”

So wrote Jean Froissart, a diarist of the Middle Ages, after an outbreak of bubonic plague in the 14th century. Fake news then meant rumours that the plague could be cured by sitting in a sewer, eating decade-old treacle or ingesting arsenic.