[hackeraccount]

Embarrassingly, I've read the details on the quote. The short version is that Kirk said something about several individuals which was changed in the "quote" to be about a group.

The paraphrase would be if I said, my co-works Bob and John were congenital idiots and I was quoted as saying "All Unix Administrators are congenital idiots"

Should she get fired for that kind of thing? Easily yes if she did it in a work product.

If she did it for something outside of work? I have no idea. Probably not but nominally she was doing straight news for the Washington Post. The deeper problem is the no one goes into Journalism to do straight news reporting but everyone at least starts off doing that and for most that's all they ever do - but everyone wants the dream; getting paid to tell other people what they think is right and wrong with the world. The only way to get that dream job is to start off doing it for free but it's not hard to see how that might conflict with your day job if your day job is straight news reporting.