In our society of the spectacle, in this all-information era, where intimacy is not respected, it is common to complain about the excessive place taken by the media, more especially the audiovisual ones and to question the ethics of the profession. It is true that journalists are more attracted by tragic facts, murderous violence, offences against the life of individuals, as they are sure then to meet the public’s expectations. During the New York terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, however, practically no pictures of the casualties were taken or at least broadcast. Some people attributed it to Federal censorship. But that day the President of the United States was away from the White House. All day long on his way back to the federal capital he sized up the event on television screens. The author questions the necessity of confronting the public with pictures of horror so as to inform it in real time of the material and human toll of a terrorist act. He relates how President Bush spent that day of September 11 and shows how the first witnesses – among whom the Naudet brothers, two French film-makers – refused to film corpses strewn on the ground around the World Trade Center twin towers.