“Anyone have the answer to this?”
Yes, that is pure nonsense. If that were true, then all the newspaper sites that rank well for genre terms would have some sort of “penalty” because virtually ALL their linking would come from off-topic sites.
Additionally low PR links are still extremely valuable for their anchor text. Anchor text is just is less valuable than before (still the most important thing though.)
Sites like the notorious .md family still rank OK… but have dropped from #1 positions because they rely heavily on tens of thousands of no-PR anchor text links. This is not a sign of a penalty, but just that trash linking is slightly less valuable than before.