One thing that needs to be made clear about media is that they are naturally biased. However, putting that aside for the sake of this example, let's imagine that the media are unbiased watch dogs.
The media is only going to do two things; report on a breaking story, and dig deeper into a potential story that may provide a good exclusive for the network.
Say that a sports personality represents a large sports apparel company that assembles their products in Mexico. Some evidence comes to light to that the company uses child labor in their production. Then, it is discovered that the Mexican government paid a large amount of money to the sports personality after their visit to the country. The media will report this, and it will automatically have people thinking that the sports personality was paid off by the Mexican government to keep the child labor quiet. This will create a negative image on that sports personality.
To change the story a bit with the same example, let's say the sports personality still represents the apparel company. However, when it is discovered that they use child labor, the personality came out publicly and stopped representing the company, and spoke out against the child labor. The media again will report this, and it will raise public support for the personality and their cause against child labor, creating a positive image.
