Perhaps she refers to the "Women make X cents on the dollar" factoid, strewn through the media, being equated to the non-fact of individual women not making the same money as a man even though they have the same education, experience, work hours etc. This is in fact a great example of, as you say, "changing of meaning of words". The "X cents" factoid is _designed_ to encourage people to draw a false interpretation and it is put forward by people who know it is wrong and desire to provoke that false interpretation.
Should the use of "alternative fact" be questioned by editors? Sure, but in this case it is fairly used.