What makes it seem worse now is that on TV you get to see the play 20 times, slowed down frame-by-frame, from 4 different angles and analyzed to death by announcers that often do not interpret the calls correctly.
I am not saying the officiating is perfect because it obviously is not, I am just saying that I don't think it is any worse than it always has been.
Adding to the above points... more than just broadcast technology has improved.Consider that 25 years ago, VCRs cost more than $1000 at a time when the average car cost around $8000. Very few people could watch games multiple times and replay close calls over and over and over. Now, it's pretty difficult to find a house or apartment without one.
Consider that 20 years ago, sports talk radio was non-existent (supposedly, the first format was WFAN in 1987). Now, I suspect every NFL city has at least one all-sports radio station and probably at least one competitor.
Consider that 15 years ago, ESPN was one channel. Now there are at least seven different ESPN channels along with pay-per-view, ESPN radio, ESPN.com, and ESPN magazine.
Consider that 10 years ago, the Internet as a term was just starting to be commonly used, and fantasy football talk was on the rsff newsgroup with hundreds of users, maybe over a thousand. Now, the FBGs site alone has 60,000+ on its e-mal list and 20,000+ in its forums.
Consider that 5 years ago, there were very few (if any) individual team fan forums. Now, nearly every newspaper in an NFL city has its own discussion forums.
Each one of these increasing media elements makes discussion and criticism of NFL officiating more likely to occur. Given the increased competition for the attention of football fans on TV, the radio and the Internet, it would not be surprising to find media outlets becoming more sensational in their reporting and analysis. (For a comparison, look at the political coverage on cable news and talk radio.) The hype surrounding the Super Bowl has also grown dramatically; every five to ten years, it seems to double. One area I am unaware of is the amount of money involved in gambling on the NFL, but I'll go out on a limb and suggest that it has shown significant growth as well.
All of the aforementioned points taken collectively do not guarantee that the officiating in the NFL has improved or stayed the same. It is very possible that it has gotten worse. However, I'm merely speculating that if the officiating was virtually the same as it was in the past, it would appear to be worse when viewed under the intensely higher scrutiny of 2006.
Tying it all together, media coverage can affect the perception of its audience to some degree. As an example, I'll use the 2000 Presidential election. The events of the election would have produced controversy regardless of the media. However, virtually no one will argue the fact that the controversy was magnified due to multiple media outlets originally calling the election for Gore combined with extensive media coverage for months after the election.
In a similar fashion, many reasonable people can and have complained about the officiating in Super Bowl XL. However, the extensive media growth described above almost certainly multiplied the controversy over the officiating. On the FBG boards, a variety of posters labeled it the "worst officiated Suer Bowl ever" (or "evah" in some cases). It's doubtful that all of these posters are at least 45 years old, and therefore have seen every Super Bowl, but that didn't stop them from their proclamation. With so many more voices having access to public dissemination of their viewpoints, and with this situation occurring at all levels of media, can it be a surprise to anyone that more complaints are being heard about the officiating?