I don't see anything in the article to indicate it wasn't just the word grooming. To quote the relevant part: She compared how reporters develop a friendly rap

I don't see anything in the article to indicate it wasn't just the word grooming. To quote the relevant part: She compared how reporters develop a friendly rapport with sources to how sexual predators “groom” children they’re targeting, the two people said. The term ‘grooming’ has been used by child safety advocates to describe how predators gain trust with their victims. Whitman’s comments upset some Quibi employees who described them as strange and off-putting. That's it. She used the word "grooming," and then some commentary from third-parties about grooming being used to describe sexual predators. Except it's also been used to describe, you know, cultivating a contact. It's an old idiom. Additional context could further strengthen the assertion that this was meant to be related to sexual predators, except "journalists are like sexual predators" isn't being described as having been said. As to a non-denial denial: "This reporting from The Information is materially inaccurate" is a moderately strong denial from a PR hack. You're free to extrapolate from that as much as you like, but it just isn't there. There's no meaningful amount of information to conclude what she meant in one direction or another. I think given the incentives of the media outlet to generate controversy, it's safe to assume that if this is the most smoke they could generate, there likely isn't any fire.