On the January 4 edition of Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto, host Neil Cavuto claimed, “You'd have a very tough time finding the [New York] Times devoting even a single day of front-page coverage to all of his [Saddam Hussein's] atrocities or murders or any of his thousands of victims over the years.” Cavuto added that the Times provided “nonstop coverage of this front-page story about how this execution was botched” but that he did “not remember seven days of coverage, let alone one day of coverage of the hundreds of thousands of people killed under Saddam.” He also falsely asserted that the Times has provided "[l]ots of coverage of his death. No coverage of the deaths that led to it."

However, a search of the Nexis database shows that the Times has given repeated front-page coverage to Saddam's brutality:

• "As Trial Nears, Poison Attack Haunts Kurds" [8/21/06]

• "Uncovering Iraq's Horrors in Desert Graves" [6/5/06]

• "Hussein Charged with Genocide in 50,000 Deaths" [4/5/06]

• "Prosecutors in Hussein Case Tie Him to Order to Kill 148" [3/1/06]

• "At Trial in Iraq, Witnesses Tell About Torture" [12/6/05]

• "Aftereffects: War Crimes; Mass Grave in Iraq May Hold Kuwaitis Missing Since 1991" [5/17/03]

• "Aftereffects: Victims; At Mass Grave in Iraq Marsh, An Open Secret Is Laid Bare" [5/14/03]

• “Aftereffects: The Graves; As Hussein Faded, Prisoners Were Executed” [4/28/03]

• "Aftereffects: Prison Graveyard; Threat Gone, Iraqis Unearth Hussein's Nameless Victims" [4/25/03]

After Hussein's execution, the Times also ran a lengthy obituary, detailing his history of “imprisonment, torture, mutilation and execution.” This piece ran on Pages A10-11 on December 30, 2006. The front page of that day's Times referred readers to the obituary and noted Hussein's brutal past: “For 30 Years, a Terror To Iraq and Neighbors. One of the most brutal tyrants of recent history, Saddam Hussein unleashed devastating regional wars and reduced oil-rich Iraq to a claustrophobic police state. His unflinching 30-year hold on Iraq ended in 2003 with the American invasion. Obituary, Pages A10-11, by Neil MacFarquhar.”

As Media Matters for America noted, on the December 29 edition of Your World, guest host Stuart Varney suggested the Times was “mourning” Hussein's death and on the January 1 edition asked, “So, is the Times now an advocate for the Iraqi dictator?”

From the January 4 edition of Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto :

CAVUTO: Well, Saddam's been dead nearly a week, and not a day has gone by without the media, especially The New York Times, regretting it, bashing it, second-guessing it, even condemning it. But you'd have a very tough time finding the Times devoting even a single day of front-page coverage to all of his atrocities or murders or any of his thousands of victims over the years. And don't my next guests know it. James Carafano is a senior research fellow from the Heritage Foundation. And Clay Waters, editor of MRC's [the Media Research Center's] TimesWatch. Clay, it is rather startling. Lots of coverage of his death. No coverage of the deaths that led to it.

[...]

CAVUTO: I do not remember what -- seven days now of nonstop coverage of this, front-page stories about how this execution was botched, how we should have done more, from the same paper that said we're doing too much already. Leaving that aside, I do not remember seven days of coverage, let alone one day of coverage, of the hundreds of thousands of people killed under Saddam.