'pall of gloom’ a cliché?

Has ‘pall of gloom’ become a cliché, a favourite of reporters of newspapers?

As I read stories about the death of Sathya Sai baba in yesterday’s newspapers, it struck me that several newspapers had written about pall of gloom descending on Puttaparthi (and elsewhere where his disciples live.)
As  I Google searched ‘pall of gloom’, I came across 752,000 results that concerned deaths, accidents and other tragedies in recent time.  In about ten minutes, the figure went up to 754000. Twenty four hours later, on April 26, 2011, this figure further went up to 776,000.
 Yahoo search yesterday presented 51,000 results for the same entry. It went up to 52,700 today.

For those who may be interested in knowing the meaning of the word ‘pall’, www. dictionary.reference.com has given the meaning of pall as

Noun:

1. A cloth, often of velvet, for spreading over a coffin, bier, or tomb.

2. A coffin.

3. Anything that covers, shrouds, or overspreads, especially with darkness or gloom.

Verb: to cover with or as with a pall.