ABSTRACT
The words of King Claudius, reflecting on the fateful consequences of the separation between words and meaning, provide an apt starting point for a critique of the role of mass media discourse in key historical events and processes of European and Western history since the outset of the age of mass communication - the central project of this book. Shakespeare's couplet captures an individual moment of what George Steiner expands into the broader 'break of the covenant between word and world' (Steiner 1989:93). This defines a process of cultural disintegration in the course of which 'words without thoughts' multiply into an immense, ever growing media tapestry of what I am calling here 'moments of untruth'.
