Gerrymandering is not the act of making seats "more secure". This is profound misinformation, gerrymandering is only ever about disenfranchising a voting block by packing them together.
The misunderstanding of who stands to benefit from redistricting has allowed republicans to propagate a narrative that "democrats do it too". In 2012, despite Republican house candidates receiving less of the popular vote they walked away with an extra 30 seats[1]. That's not a bipartisan effect.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Represe...
Moving a Democrat into a Democratic district makes that district's Democratic seat more secure.
At the same time, moving that Democrat out of your district makes your Republican seat more secure.
You can't do one without the other.
The specific language that the OC, and almost all journalism uses to describe the strategy is "making districts more secure". The only way to interpret that, in the context of the phase definition of security, is adding voter proportion to a district which is already secure. This is never in the interest of the party that it is happening to, so yes, it is dishonest to describe it this way.
If you don't believe that this can be in the interest of either party (since it's happening "to" both of them), you don't have much left to complain about.