It very much does. Stopping the blame at Snowden was a judgment call. They could have said it was the fallout of their own reporting (stopping the buck further

It very much does. Stopping the blame at Snowden was a judgment call. They could have said it was the fallout of their own reporting (stopping the buck further down the line), or of the practices that Snowden leaked memos about (stopping the buck further up the line), but instead they chose to point the finger at the middle man. That is judgment.