Michael Kassan is tired of consulting firm MediaLink being described as the mafia of the media industry. “Please, please, please, I hate that word,” the chairman and CEO appealed from his Century City office in early December. Sure, the former lawyer acknowledges that there’s mystery surrounding MediaLink’s work in strategic planning, M&A integration and executive recruiting. After all, his clients are some of the biggest media, entertainment and advertising entities in the world, and he offers that the company has been “very fortunate to position ourselves at the center of many conversations.” As he prepares for January’s CES technology confab in Las Vegas, where he’ll broker scores of meetings, he says, “If there’s an implication [that our work] is done somehow through something untoward, I haven’t figured out what it…