Seems there are two orthogonal issues being discussed here: the actual scientists and popularizers (the likes of Feynman, Sagan, and Hawking), who really understand what’s going on and are trying to communicate it to the world; and the blithering idiots in the news media who wouldn’t know π from a hole in the ground, don’t care about accuracy, and are only interested in circulation. In between you have the likes of Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson, who aren’t true experts, but play them convincingly enough on TV that people believe them anyway.
With respect to the media question, we really should be asking ourselves this question: “If they make such obvious mistakes in field X, about which I know something, why should I assume they suddenly are getting things right in field Y, about which I don’t know anything?” The same issue came up here a few months ago[1]–a web article that was being recommended as “very good” contained two blatant, serious, and trivially-verifiable factual errors. So if the authors were incompetent or dishonest enough to publish those statements, why should I trust them to get anything else right, when I don’t know the truth for myself?