MSNBC Can’t Quit Sarah Palin

MSNBC has, journalistically speaking, spent the last two-plus years stalking Sarah Palin, The Hollywood Reporter reveals, counting the mentions to show how on-air obsessed the liberal news channel has become with the one-time governor turned tea party rock star. Neither pro-Palin Fox nor middling CNN tallied as many Palin stories or citations in 2009-2010 as MSNBC, according to the Reporter.

Sarah Palin

Fox, however, doesn’t trail MSNBC by much in its devotion to the GOP’s telegenic 2008 vice-presidential candidate.

Using the electronic database service LexisNexis, the Reporter found that at both networks, “every major program . . . has been ratcheting up the Palin coverage.”

Before he vacated his chair this month, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, for example, mentioned Palin in 146 segments in 2009 and 179 in 2010.

Fox’s Sean Hannity logged 94 Palin mentions on his show in 2009 and 145 in 2010.

Only CNN — rated lowest of the big three 24/7 cable news spigots — seems inclined to de-Palinize a little. The Reporter found Palin in decline from 2009 to 2010 as a subject on shows hosted by newsmen Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper.