The NFL, like every other professional sport, looks for mass appeal. As much as I think the league is inconsistent in the way it dishes out fines and calls penalties, it does not benefit itself if it is caught favoring one team over another. Conspiracy theorists believing referees are told to favor a team in a game are not really thinking big picture. If the NFL game outcomes were fixed at any level, most fans would stop watching and start watching the CFL or college football as an alternative until another professional league took over for the NFL. The NFL is concerned principally with image and revenue, not who wins or loses a game at any point in the season.
The media (including NFL.com) is another animal altogether. It strives to be read/watched and cares little if a disfavored team is burned to the ground in the process. It will happily demonize a team to reach 31 of 32 fan bases because that maximizes reader count. The majority of football fans hate the consistent success the Patriots have achieved, so revelling in setbacks and failures of the Patriots and giving fans of other teams hope is a sound business decision. It is also why I generally try not to visit most anti-Patriots sites (which means most sites).
