I think this is the journalist playing at the idea that we don't have a universally accepted definitions of "life", "virus", "viroids", "mobile genetic elements", "plasmids", or the other words that describe what I view as the agents of evolutionary games. It is kind of catchy way to raise that conversation though eh!

Viruses have capsids which are protein shells that envelop them. These are just bare RNA strands, which are considered viroids.