Taboo: Abu Ghraib images are one thing. But 9/11? Off limits.

ON Saturday, September 15, 2001, just four days after the terrorist attacks, ABC News anchorman Peter Jennings hosted a special program entitled "Answering Kids' Questions." Exploring the effect of the attacks on children, Jennings and a Yale psychiatrist discussed whether young people should see the much-played video of airliners crashing into the World Trade Center. The answer was no. "I mean, some of us have kids, too," Jennings said. "And we remember from the past that if you run these images over and over and over again, it is tough."

That was the beginning of a new policy at ABC News: No more use of the planes-into-towers video. "We actually talked to a number of psychologists, who told us that kids seeing this over and over were unable to distinguish that this was something that was [not] happening again and again and again," says ABC News vice president Jeffrey Schneider. Because of that possible effect on children, Schneider continues, the network decided to use only still pictures to tell the September 11 story.

ABC is not alone. Indeed, across the network- and cable-news spectrum, there is a virtual blackout of the video of the actual terrorist attacks of 9/11. Network executives say they have made the decision on the basis of taste, or respect for those killed, or concern for children, or other reasons, but the end result is that at a time when there is a continuing and passionate debate about the direction of the War on Terror, there is little, if any, graphic representation of what started that war in the first place.

At NBC News, vice president Allison Gollust says the network "rarely permits" use of the video. Gollust says that, after an extensive internal discussion, "we chose to limit usage of these images because they are very disturbing and we feel that it isn't necessary to have people watching be disturbed over and over again.... We are cognizant of a need to be sensitive to this type of video and its usage, and signal that sensitivity to our viewers." At CBS News, a spokeswoman says the network leaves the decision up to the executive producers of individual programs, but there is a widespread understanding that the video can be used "only when it is really necessary."

At CNN, the policy is to allow use of the video of the terrorist planes in flight but to "stop short of the moment of impact," according to spokesman Matt Furman. "It's simply a matter of having regard for the sensitivities of our audience." At MSNBC, a spokesman says, "We are very, very, very careful about using those images. Use of the video would require the approval of a senior executive." And at Fox, the policy is much the same. "We don't use it indiscriminately," says Kevin Magee, vice president of news programming. Magee says Fox decided to limit use of the footage within days of September 11, and now, any reporter who wants to use the video in a taped report has to ask Fox's top news executive, John Moody, for permission.

Put it all together, and that means the moving pictures of the September 11 attacks--surely the most powerful of the television age--have virtually disappeared from American life. "My staff cannot recall seeing it in any network newscast at any time in the past two years," says Brent Baker of the Media Research Center, where workers are paid to watch television news all day. "That doesn't mean it didn't ever air, but it has been very rare."

In some ways, it's reasonable that the networks would place limits on the use of the video. Any time television news, especially in its 24-hour cable form, has memorable pictures, it tends to overuse them. Video might be used for the "bumpers" that end program segments, it might be dressed up with "America at War"-style graphics, it might even be set to music. Given the gravity and importance of the World Trade Center video, cheapening the pictures in the standard TV-news fashion would be unwise.

But now, television-news executives seem to have gone too far in the other direction. Baker wonders whether some viewers "have lost a sense of the horror of that day" because they no longer see pictures of it. And Tom Rosenstiel, the former Los Angeles Times media critic who now heads the Project for Excellence in Journalism, says, "I think it's possible that a well-intended policy that is designed to be thoughtful and sensitive to the feelings of family members or children can have the unintended consequence, two years later, of causing us to forget how we felt." Rosenstiel adds that he believes the policy might, in the end, be entirely warranted, but says, "I think the question of, has enough time passed that they should reevaluate those policies, is probably a good question to ask."

Although it started with television newscasts, the don't-show-the-planes approach has now become the accepted style of portraying the events of September 11--for everyone. For example, when Michael Moore's new anti-Bush tirade Fahrenheit 9/11 reaches the moment of the attacks, the screen goes completely black. For several seconds, audiences hear the sound of a roaring plane hitting the World Trade Center, and then another, and then screams and crying and the collapse of the twin towers--all with nothing but black onscreen.

Some critics loved it: The Washington Post called the scene "one of the most moving sequences in recent cinema" and Moore's "finest artistic moment." But leaving out the video was about more than art. In the film, Moore argues that the United States invaded Afghanistan not to avenge the attacks of September 11, and not to begin a global War on Terror, but to make it possible for the Unocal Corporation to build a natural-gas pipeline across Afghanistan for the financial benefit of Vice President Dick Cheney. Even for a filmmaker of Moore's brazenness, it would have been difficult to make that argument--which even some of his supporters have conceded has no basis in fact--if the narrative were running over video of 757s crashing into the World Trade Center, doomed Americans standing in windows gasping for air, and some of the victims jumping to their deaths, rather than face a fiery end.

And that is ultimately why the question of the September 11 video is important. It is far easier to argue that the War on Terror is about oil, or empire, or Halliburton, when you simply don't show what it is really about: the attacks of September 11. Americans won't forget that day. But as it recedes in time, they may lose the visceral feeling they experienced as terrorists struck at the centers of American power and killed 3,000 people. Showing that horrifying video would remind people of just how they felt--and of why the War on Terror goes on.