Media Shouldn't Name the White House Crashers

By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

I listen in the mornings to POTUS radio, the politics channel on XM, and the "Morning Briefing" there is doing a great thing. They are refusing to say the name of the couple who crashed the state dinner at the White House last week, because, as host Tim Farley put it, "We're not buying what they're selling." The rest of the news media should refuse to use their names as well. By broadcasting their identities, we're only giving them exactly what they want: more publicity.

I didn't write about the "balloon boy," whose parents were trying to get on a reality TV show, for the same reason. By turning them into household names, we become enablers in a way. It encourages even more people to do the same thing.

The difference is that this time, there is a serious policy problem here—one that has to do with protecting our president and the prime minister of one of our strategic allies from security threats in a post-9/11 world, especially when those leaders are within the confines of the White House itself. According to news reports, President Obama is under the "highest threat level for any recent President," and the last thing we need is more people trying to get in the White House without security checks.

The Secret Service was lucky that these people seem to only be narcissistic nuts, and not terrorists. But they could have been.

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