Obama was fooled by CNN's and Fox's botched health care coverage: Reports

President Obama was fooled by the erroneous reporting on the Supreme Court's health care decision Thursday, initially believing CNN's and Fox's incorrect reports that the individual mandate was stuck down, according to published reports.

Obama was standing outside the Oval Office watching live coverage of the announcement when both CNN and Fox reported that the mandate, the core of his signature policy, had been ruled unconstitutional by the high court, reports said.

Courtesy of Gary He @garyhe

Within minutes, both networks had issued corrections, but by then Obama's staff had reportedly already informed him that nearly all parts of the Affordable Care Act - including the mandate - had indeed been upheld.

Both networks later issued statements, with CNN saying it jumped the gun on reporting on only the initial portions of Roberts' majority opinion before he read the rest.

"CNN regrets that it didn't wait to report out the full and complete opinion regarding the mandate," the network said in a statement. "We made a correction within a few minutes and apologize for the error."

Fox News was less apologetic in its statement, saying rather that the network "gave our viewers the news as it happened," then calling out CNN for its mistake.

"When Justice Roberts said, and we read, that the mandate was not valid under the Commerce clause, we reported it," the network said in a statement. "By contrast, one other cable network was unable to get their Supreme Court reporter to the camera, and said as much."

The Associated Press, which was among the first organization to correctly report the decision, issued its own statement, but it went to its own staff - telling them to stop taunting CNN.

"Please, immediately, stop taunting on social networks about CNN and others' SCOTUS ruling mistake and the AP getting it right," AP Central U.S. Region Editor David Scott said in the staff memo. "That's not the impression we want to reflect as an organization. Let our reporting take the lead."