I'd have to recheck his CV but I don't think he is a "scientist" by the usual standard, more of a reporter that can engage in critical thinking. I may very well be wrong about his background.
Now I know the MSM will never give equal billing but I think it's incumbent on science itself to clean up it's house. That's not to say that there aren't some that have strong disagreements, and probably more than don't speak out because of fear of losing funding, but peer review needs to be opened up to critics, not just the choir.
Agree absolutely that it's always been there, it just seems to be that science has appeared to become more agenda driven than in the past. If that's not correct then I think it would be a good thing for the scientific community to come out with a strong statement repudiating agenda driven science entirely. I'd still be skeptical, but I'd be willing to wait and see.
I suspect few scientists have the gift for either relating easily to reporters or for story-telling (which is the nature of mass communication), themsleves. Properly expressed, science has so many qualifiers (the dreaded "If," "Perhaps," and "Maybe" Syndrome), that the wonder isn't that science is badly reported, the wonder is that it gets into the media at all. They may also consider "public relations" as a distraction from their real work. In this day of politicized science that may be the wrong attitude, but there it is. Someone like Carl Sagan steps forward and is attacked by both sides.