The traditional way to control the media is to pay them off. Media make most their money from advertisers and the way big business get the media to toe the line is by throwing advertising bucks at them. The media, broadly speaking, are less inclined to go after a product or exploit a controversy if it hurts their relationship with crucial advertisers/industries. If you pay a companies wages they're inclined to support you. Similar principle with government/politicians acting on behalf of big business and certain industries.
How the NRL do that? I don't think they can.
Being adversarial with the media could help. The game ought to ban players for getting pissed and destroying property or assaulting women, and there ought to be some consistent punishment for punching as it's outside the laws of the game, but at the same time let's be clear in saying f**k the media and haughty parents. Let's be realistic in that these things won't better the games image because the media are still their to chuck dirt on our names about other shit, because it's in their nature to do so.
I just feel as a sport we need to be calling people on their nonsense and elitism. Critics of the game are peddling their filth and doing so without challenge. People in the game with power and influence, the ones who should be fighting our corner, they aren't fighting back. If our sports administration were an individual it would be Nate Myles, stood there hands down, hoping to absorb punches like a f**kwit. What Dave Smith and his buddies and almost everyone in league with a voice are doing is appeasing the enemies of rugby league. Too scared or inherently stupid to stand-up to them. It's one of the reasons I won't ever celebrate Dave Smith, even if I agree with what he's doing, because the fact of the matter is he's only doing it in response to media hysteria. These are changes he could have made before the season started, he didn't. They aren't his changes, the media has made these changes, he's simply overseen them. You could make Bunniesman the CEO and he'd have made the same changes.
Challenging the media, if even a little, would help the game imo. Right now everything is one sided. A strong media unit as Taipan mentioned can do a lot. There's got to be some balance here, whether it's simply highlighting all the positive the game does, or taking certain journos and outlets to task when they make stuff up and talk profound bollocks.
I hate Scientology but you've got to give credit where it's due, they're not scared of getting their hands dirty. If we had an nth of their tenacity, minus the widespread illegalities and lunacy, we'd be off to a good start.
