President Obama has taken a lot of flack for using a teleprompter when he speaks, but I suspect there are many good reasons that he relies on them. For one thing, he is keenly aware that every word he utters will be analyzed, repeated and re-broadcast dozens, perhaps hundreds of times. He wants to choose his words carefully and stay on message, and a teleprompter helps him achieve that goal.
Teleprompters are also effective when addressing large audiences, as the President does almost every time he speaks. With rare exceptions, his speeches are broadcast on television and beamed across the country and often across the globe. Teleprompters are made for such large audiences because the viewers/listeners can’t really see the prompter itself. Likewise, they are a distraction to smaller audiences and people in the same room with the speaker.
One thing that many may not realize about these speech tools – also known as autocues -- is that they are difficult to use. It takes a tremendous amount of practice – both as a speaker and with the prompter – to deliver a speech effectively while looking at rolling text.
Speakers who use this equipment need to know their speech very well, rehearse it often and use short sentences, since only a few lines of a speech appear on the prompter.
Obama isn’t the only President to earn notoriety for his use of a teleprompter. Bill Clinton had a heart-stopping experience with one during a 1993 address to a joint session of Congress. He was to unveil his plan for health care reform, and he had revised and rewritten the speech until the moment he left for the capitol. In fact, he continued revising it on the ride down
Before he began speaking and while members of the House and Senate were giving him a long ovation, he told Al Gore, who was sitting behind him on the dais, that the wrong speech was on the prompter. Luckily,
