Again, this is irrelevant. I find it hard to believe how often I have to repeat this. The Harvard Extension School does not hire tenured professors. You do not become a tenured faculty, let alone an associate professor, at Harvard's FAS if you have no research background. The story should fail a minimal scrutiny test from a layperson, let alone a journalist with more than 20 years of experience. This just doesn't add up.
Why do you repeatedly say "I can't believe I have to repeat this" and then say something you haven't mentioned in this thread?
What an "associate professor" is isn't common knowledge, even for a journalist. It both means something different in Commonwealth countries and the definition of "associate" is "entry level" which doesn't fit either version of an associate professor.
I'd absolutely expect an experienced American journalist to have a pretty good idea of how academia operates in the US. I do and I don't have a research background. I have no idea though how things operate in India.
The title is still fishy though even if she (as a journalist!) took some liberties in implying she was a professor at Harvard University (and what that implies) even though she wasn't. Just as if I said I graduated from Harvard when I got a degree of some sort from HES, that's clearly misleading. If you look through the faculty directory of HES, it doesn't look as if HES generally gives titles; most of the titles given are the faculty's positions at other institutions where applicable. (There are a few Lecturers in Extension.)