Well, that's simultaneously the benefit and the drawback. Nightly News ran an exclusive the other night that interviewed some chain smoker who whored it up as well, and the piece highlighted Anonymous's accomplishments of taking down VISA and MasterCard. That's what Nightly News indicated that they were known for. I don't even recall if they mentioned Scientology, and if they did, it was in passing.
Regardless of what Anonymous can be, the media has latched on to the "computer hacking," and that's what Anonymous is now to every non-informed person who gets their information from press. A bunch of basement computer nerds, triumphing over old money establishment with all the suspense of a Grisham novel; that made a lot more headway in the international media than Project Chanology ever did, because it's a more interesting story.
The important part is that Anonymous isn't making strides to fix it: they're learning where the reward is, and all of the recent operations have lingered in that area -- countless SQL injections and DDoS attacks later, any possible positive outcome for Anonymous has long been overshadowed by the destructive. Even if, as you say, all of the destructive ops have been the work of a group that's genuinely out of touch with what Anonymous should be, the inherent drawback to anonymity itself means that their tactic has won the fight.
