'NY Times' Only Major Paper to Show Dead Saddam on Front Page

Editor and Publisher
Jan. 01, 2007

NEW YORK It's a rare day when the august New York Times tops the New York Post -- and every other major paper in the U.S. -- in grisly or sensationalistic front page coverage, but it did so on Sunday. An E&P survey of front pages from around the country reveals that the Times was the only major paper to include a picture of executed Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, on its front page, after his hanging.

It was even above the fold.

The picture, showing Saddam on the floor of the execution chamber wrapped in a sheet -- his face and blood around his mouth and neck showing -- was transmitted by AP on Saturday, captured from Iraqi TV. It was carried Saturday on some Web sites, but even there, most of them merely showed video of the steps leading up to the hanging.

Many newspapers, big and small, on Sunday did feature graphic images from the hanging on the front page, but only to the point of showing Saddam getting fitted with the noose. Except for the Times, no other major paper showed the post-death scene, and it was hard to find even a smaller paper that did that -- besides the Atlantic City, N.J., daily.

Even the New York tabloids, the Post and the Daily News, refrained on the front page.