I would tend to call someone "experienced" if they can hit their target every time firing at once-per-second while maintaining safe firing discipline. But not someone who misses their target many times at a higher rate of speed, flailing around in an unsafe manner, but still managing to beat some arbitrary timer in the process. So the definition of "experienced" does vary, basically, depending on the experience of the person defining "experienced".

Anyway, my point is, it is difficult to say exactly what "experienced" means, no matter what the situation being described is. Does participating on ETS make us experienced? Does carrying a PSK make us experienced? It's kind of hard to say. So we just have to take the news report on face value. Not trusting it totally, but not completely disregarding it either.