The AP’s Ron Fournier is at it again, and with the help of the main headline on Drudge. In a piece entitled “Analysis: Teleprompter telegraphs Obama caution”, Fournier makes it sound like Obama relied totally on a teleprompter during last night’s presser:

What kind of politician brings a teleprompter to a news conference?

A careful one.

President Barack Obama took no chances in his second prime-time news conference, reading a prepared statement in which he took both sides of the AIG bonus brouhaha and asked an anxious nation for its patience.

So Fournier leaves you with this feeling that the entire thing was staged, maybe even the actual Q&A section. He does clarify a little bit more later on:

The teleprompter was no help during the question-and-answer session (reporters don’t signal their intentions), but Obama was no less careful during that give and take.

Obama’s opening remarks were really short, only taking about 10 minutes out of the hour long event. So Ron Fournier decides to focus only on that first ten minutes, and leave the quick skimming readers with the impression that’s how the whole thing went.

And since Obama had the teleprompter and played it safe, it left the wingnuts with nothing. Here’s how Drudge is pushing this story:

I would much rather have a President play it safe with a teleprompter and be boring, than a dangerous idiot who goes out there and says things like “bring ‘em on” when talking about the Iraq war, and those people listening and doing just that – at the cost of a lot of lives.