If the guy is dumb or arrogant enough to get drunk and make off-the-cuff offensive jokes about the press in front of the press and his boss then he should be fired promptly. That he wasn't speaks volumes.

Senior executives of billion-dollar companies do not accidentally have dinner with reporters. The dinner was part of a PR effort. Maybe the guy's really a rube or a loose canon. But personally, my guess is that he "joked" about harming a journalist whose coverage they didn't like because he wanted other journalists to think twice about giving them bad coverage.