Text-image combinations can authenticate events and establish a visual memory. Here this phenomenon is explored: A pragmatic theory of text-image relationships is developed and empirically tested on the example of print media reports about terrorism in the FRG during the 1970s. The analyses show how texts unambiguously illuminate the meaning of images and how photographs substantiate and intensify interpretations of spectacular events to an extent which cannot be attained through language alone. It thus becomes clear that “terrorism” is not only to be understood as a kind of violence, but also as a series of media events.