Peter Baker, White House correspondent for the New York Times, admitted in a recent interview that he drew ire from President Obama when he once wrote about the president’s extensive reliance on teleprompters.
In a Q&A with his own newspaper published on Wednesday, Baker recalled the story.
“The only time he’s [Obama] ever expressed any personal pique with me was over a relatively small story that noted that he likes to use teleprompters during speeches more than his predecessors did,” Baker said.
The offending story ran in March of 2009, just a few months after Obama’s inauguration.
“Presidents have been using teleprompters for more than half a century, but none relied on them as extensively as Mr. Obama has so far,” the story said. “While presidents typically have used them for their most important speeches to the nation — an inauguration, a State of the Union or an Oval Office address — Mr. Obama uses them for everyday routine announcements, and even for the opening statement at his news conference.”
Even before he was elected, Obama has been both heralded as a master public speaker and mocked, largely by his Republican critics, for using a teleprompter for his speeches.
In 2011, it was reported that some White House materials were stolen from a truck that was holding them in Virginia. Included was at least one teleprompter.
The influential Drudge Report linked to the story with the blaring headline, “SPEECHLESS: OBAMA’S TELEPROMPTER STOLEN.” The implication was that Obama could not deliver his soaring speeches without a crutch.
“He seemed annoyed that anyone might interpret that to mean he needed a script to tell him what to say, which, of course, he doesn’t,” Baker said of his story. “To me, it was just interesting as a marker of what makes him comfortable and the discipline and precision he usually brings to a speech that he’s intent on delivering exactly as he and his speechwriters craft it.”
