why does the furry fandom get such a bad rep ?
In my personal opinion its a multi faceted question partly said already.
1) the media will twist anything to sell more papers/articles etc. Anything that is not normative is asking to be taken from the wrong perspective and morphed into something worse than it is. Playing things up and feeding the fire seems to be the agenda on a lot of "touchy" subjects because stirring the pot can lead to more articles on the same thing : its a self fulfilling prophecy, and it feeds itself quite well. "weird people dressing up like animals and dry humping" sells more things as someone stated, than "furry convention goers donated the largest lump private toy donation to Debbies Kids". Humans are naturally intrigued more by whats shocking and out of the normal, especially if its negative. We are seemingly hard wired that way.
2) its something that is legitimately strange for the adult populations. Most people grow out of cartoon animals and the likes. We for whatever reason held onto that love or joy of talking animals. The aspects of anthorpormorphic animals have changed over the last few thousand years from something aimed at everyone (tales of gods, beasts, man-beasts etc) to things for children (Disney movies come to mind)
3) Fursuiting is something that is also strange. Its like modern Halloween but people want to attach the connotations spread by the media and a few bad apples that ruin the bunch.
4) this is the biggie :
there is an adult side to the fandom, and its a highly prevalent one. We are as a whole more liberal on sex, intimacies, and what and when they are appropriate. We produce an amazing volume of artwork, and a portion of that is porn. Porn will always get people to think you are "depraved" unless its like a Hustler Magazine or Playboy. Online almost all of our forums have adult sections, adult themes are often allowed, and unless spoken PG-13 + seems to be our normal rating on most things. There are some PG or G rated places around for furs, and plenty of part to go along with it, But they are not the normal for our subgroup.