Yeah, this is totally not the same thing as a spacetime wormhole, and they really shouldn't describe it along those lines. It's particularly annoying to me because this process has potential for practical real-world benefits, but they choose to describe it in such a way that many people will be misled. This process
looks like a wormhole, but that is something of an illusion caused by "hiding" the electromagnetic field. At no point is the electromagnetic field taking a short cut through space.
For the record, I do not think that traversable wormholes are possible. Exotic matter with negative mass/energy would be required to create a real wormhole, and as far as we can tell there is no such thing. Even dark energy possesses positive energy density. Particles with negative mass/energy would violate conservation of momentum (at the very least) and therefore cannot exist. Plank scale wormholes have a higher probability of existing (and some quantum effects are occasionally interpreted in such a way by some physicists), but they are likewise not proven, and they would not be usable for travel. Virtual particles can have negative energy, but they are useless in this regard, though they do help generate Hawking radiation from black holes. "Squeezed light" manifests negative energy, but it is balanced by positive energy and not applicable to this topic. The closest thing to useful negative energy* that I know about is the Casimir effect, but that would also not help make wormholes due to its incredible weakness and ridiculously short range.
These limitations also prevent "warp drives" like the Alcubierre drive. Miguel Alcubierre has expressed his own disbelief in the possibility of such a device, saying, "from my understanding there is no way it can be done, probably not for centuries if at all."
That said, there's no reason to avoid wormholes in sci-fi (unless you're writing hard sci-fi, of course). I use them in my novels, but I wave away the limitations of reality with pseudoscience and technobabble; the trick is trying to make it convincing. In short, write what you want, don't worry too much about reality. The story one wishes to tell matters more than realism, IMHO.
*Yes, gravity can be considered negative energy, but not the type that can be used for wormholes.