He's not "pointing to Ezra Klein to explain"; he's citing reporting. If some part of it is false, correct it.

In the age of the internet, shooting the messenger is not an effective way to suppress the message.

Most of the time it is. Look at how they character assassinated Snowden. They said his girlfriend was a stripper, he was a Russian spy, etc.

Your first impression might be to say that wasn't effective, but did we ever get any real NSA reform? Nope.

But to your point, the message still got out, but many people allowed themselves to ignore it.