SATIRE is an ancient arrow in the writer’s quiver, having been used to make cutting points since the days of the ancient Greeks.It is commonly understood to mean the use of humour, irony, exaggeration or ridicule to expose stupidity, but the advent of the internet seems to have produced a new definition that is vying with sarcasm as the lowest form of humour — straight-out lies in the guise of genuine news reports.SA has been particularly hard hit by this phenomenon lately, with the credibility of established news portals being constantly undermined by sensational bogus "news" reports shared on social media and linking to anonymous websites, often with deliberately confusing URLs. These often go viral, spread by naive individuals who are oblivious of the real damage such nonsense can wreak in the real world.Wednesday produced a good example — the Department of Health was forced to release a media statement denying that it had warned South Africans not to buy or eat bananas bought fr...
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