The media has to be really careful about crucifying someone who has been vindicated by the prosecutor in a case. If they start attacking him saying he was involved, they can be sued for libel. They didn't press the issue because there's no evidence of wrongdoing other than him having said that he lied to his team, saying he'd seen a video he hadn't seen in order to lend gravity to his rebuke of the actions of the players. The media ran that story and it didn't really have legs so it fizzled in the news cycle. To dig it up again and try to manufacture more out of it than that would open these journalists to being sued for libel. They're smarter than that. There's just nothing more to report about it.
I'm not saying that the media should have attacked him and claimed he was involved. They don't attack the person personally because you're right, you get in trouble for slander/libel that way. When they want to go after someone who wasn't actually found guilty or charged with anything, they do things like calling for that person to resign, or put pressure on their employer to fire them, or say things like "even though they were innocent they need to go away because of the optics."
However, they didn't do any of that that with Franklin. And I'm not suggesting that they should have; I'm just making an observation that they didn't do that with him but they have done that with other people in similar situations.