Extra, Extra read all about it, from the benches to the reaches...

The media histrionics in this series haven't exactly provided for journalism's greatest hours, objectivity it seems is a byproduct of a different era in this time of the blast oven of all access coverage.


Whether it has been the observations of a Mike Milbury or Don Cherry, or the team coverage of the competing newspapers of Vancouver and Boston,  the concept of a balanced approach to coverage just hasn't been on in this Stanley Cup final.

Rumours and spin have taken the place of cold facts in many a report, the stoking of allegiances seemingly the new basis of the style guides of many of the newspapers and electronic media covering the Stanley Cup Finals.

The varying degrees of observation and perception did not escape the eye of Cam Cole of the Vancouver Sun, who penned this column on the growing cacophony of noise, an increasingly bombastic sideshow of this Stanley Cup Final.

For Game seven tonight, the broadsides of the journalistic guns of late,  leave us to almost expect CNN to reunite Bernard Shaw and Peter Arnett, placing them atop the roof of the Hotel Vancouver reporting on the bomb blasts off in the Surrey distance making their way downtown towards the Rogers Arena.
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This could be the first sports series in history, where the reporters aren’t observers, but embedded participants in the daily battles.

Perhaps no better examples of such can be found than in this Vancouver Sun article of this week, where the cause of the quest Stanley Cup has provided for parallels of a war time footing. Or in the spirit of equal time, this suggestion from the Boston Herald that it's now time to put Vancouver out its misery.

We could go on, but game time is fast approaching, so there's not near enough time to catalogue the vast archive of us -- agin' them.

There have of course been more than a few solid pieces of reporting, leaving behind the bias of attachment to the home side to reflect on the game as a whole sample, but they have been the exception as opposed to the rule. Harder to find than a power play goal by either of the teams on the ice tonight.

When the game ends, the players perhaps in this case grudgingly, will meet at centre ice to shake hands and bring to an end the NHL season.

Having spent the last two weeks reading the dispatches from the correspondents and commentators, we suspect that may not be happening, grudgingly or not, up in the press box anytime soon.