As @
Witte49 wrote, media, even Russian, care about the KHL only if there is something negative to talk about. I do not know media, excluding Tatarstan´s based Biznis Online, who study the KHL deeply. And there are many things to talk about.
Regarding debts - all story, it happened at the time of 2014 & had nothing to do with the KHL. The league has done a great job since those times. There may be one or two clubs with payment delays, but they have always paid it.
Regarding games against the NHL - yes, the NHL has such an offer on the table. We need to address the question to them.
Regarding the NL - yes, good league, but still below the KHL. The NL has one or two clubs able to pay on KHL´s upper level, and it is not enough. According to Forbes, the average payroll budget is 5-6M EUR in NL, a few clubs are able to spend 10-11M EUR. In the KHL, you have an average of 9M EUR (700M rubles) & future salary cap at 900M rubles (13M EUR) - plus other bucks not counting in the cap (U21, some bonuses), so it may be realistically at 15M EUR.
The SHL is even worse with payroll, just 4M EUR on average, plus taxes. The Liiga even worse than SHL.