Press Releases like this are for investors and media outlets, not for general consumers. Of course they are going to focus on damage control, because if they didn't focus on the safety features of autopilot and the hands-on requirement some media outlet would contort the situation and say "What safety features does this car to prevent an accident like this in the future? Is this technology actually ready to be used on our roads?".

I think they did a fine job of handling this, and with the high visibility of this incident due to the use of autopilot they really had no other option.