Newsbusters yesterday continued the Palin pity party that the far-right press has been throwing for nearly two weeks in the wake of the Tucson gun massacre. And Newsbusters' claim is that the press has been paying waaaay too much attention to Palin recently, and that's why her polling numbers are down. (i.e. Please ignore the fact that Palin's approval numbers have been dreadful for months.)

Newsbusters even has statistics to back up its claim [emphasis added]:

From January 8 through January 16, CNN ran 80 stories that included the name of the former Alaska governor.

That's roughly nine pieces per day, during which her name was mentioned approximately 664 times or over 70 times every 24 hours!

...

During the same time period (chosen to coincide with CNN's polling period ending January 16), MSNBC ran 25 reports on Palin mentioning her name a staggering 474 times during those segments.

Those figures are even more astounding when you consider that MSNBC only transcribes weekday prime time programs. Just imagine the kind of pounding Palin was taking from these shills during the weekends and outside of prime time.

MSNBC's sister network NBC also was involved in the attacks logging 23 reports with 126 mentions of Palin.

NPR did 20 stories with 100 mentions; ABC 17 and 62; CBS 14 and 59.

Add it all up, and these outlets did 179 reports about Palin in those sixteen days (remember - this only includes weekday primetime for MSNBC!) mentioning her name a staggering 1485 times.

Did you notice which news outlet was absent from that Palin tally? That's right, Fox News.

As I noted earlier, if anyone's obsessed with Palin in recent weeks it's the folks at Fox News who can't stop talking about her. But of course, that fact ruins the right-wing claim that it's the “left” and the liberal “press” that's obsessed with Palin, so Newsbusters forgets to mention Fox News' endless fixation.