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During the Maurice Papon trial (1997-1998), historians were called on to give testimony as expert-witnesses. Some of them accepted and others refused. This question appeared in the public sphere in two periods. The general press presented the expert-witness in a favorable light. It introduced a pedagogical dimension to the trial, pushed the process along and minimized what could have gone against a condemnation. Then in scholarly journals a disagreement arose whose terms and stakes are at the center of this paper. It examines how historical expertise became the object of a professional counter-expertise by Henry Rousso and that this does not appear very often in the general press. The place of the destruction of Jews in the historical and journalistic analyses of the Vichy regime is then studied. Lastly, the blind spot of the press debate is highlighted: in the eyes of several participants, the memory of the genocide acts as an obstacle to an overhaul of politics.