I think this was a bit more involved than it appears
The journalists who were banned got their stories directly from players. This is about Ten Bob telling the journos that if they carry on getting information from player leaks then they are not talking to the club. This is why there is a song and dance about his chance to comment which when you look at it is a fair request. Just for instance say Rashford gets a hard time internally about the way he is playing or training and next thing you know it’s in the Express that the training regimes are shit people have downed tools etc
I would imagine a similar internal thing has gone on which we don’t know about
The phrase “controlling the narrative” is a loaded one but to be fair to Ten Hag you can’t run a group of people if a number of them are running off to the press every time something doesn’t go their way and then that’s get printed without any challenge or check.
As much as it is uncomfortable this is ETH doing his job and doing it quite well. He’s tackled both sides of the problem