Campbell Brown is the founder of the74million.org and a former anchor at NBC News and CNN.

To my former TV colleagues: Please stop. Just for one week, don’t say his name. As many have already said, no presidential candidate in history has gotten this much free airtime. Let’s stop being complicit in promoting his hateful and harmful demagoguery. Just for one week.

I know what you are going to say. The high-minded response will be that he is a leading presidential candidate making outrageous, provocative statements. Your job is to report the news and let Americans decide how to think about it. But I will say this back to you: TV has been obsessed with Trump from the moment he announced, well before he was leading in most polls.


It’s censorship, some will say. No, it’s not. There’s always YouTube. Let him have YouTube.

As a former cable news anchor, I have been in your shoes, so let’s be honest about why TV is bombarding us with his every pronouncement. Contemptible yet spellbinding, he is candy for the cameras. Every performance both repulses and compels, and no one looks away. No one ever looks away. And of course, the job of every TV anchor and reporter is partly trying to ensure no one ever looks away.

It feels slightly less icky enabling him when you tussle with him, point out his lies and call out his megalomania, but we all know this is about the bottom line. He is damn good for business. As the ratings go up, so does advertising revenue. The cable and network bosses have never been so happy.

I write about education now, and at one point I thought that knowing his policy views might matter. Early on I was curious to see if he had given the issue any serious thought. But it doesn’t matter. Nothing he says matters. The line has been crossed, re-crossed and is now zigzagging its way into infinity. Ban him from the next debate. You are allowed to do that.

The oversaturation is now doing real harm to our democracy, to national unity and to our sanity. John Cassidy rightly asked in the New Yorker whether there should be some nod to the old-school journalism mission of serving the public interest: “Is it in the public interest for a calculating demagogue like Trump to be granted such a large and powerful platform, on which to present his increasingly alarmist world view? Is there a way, short of deliberately restricting his television appearances, to insure that he doesn’t have it his own way?”

The answer is no. TV turns him on and only TV can turn him off. I can’t help but laugh at the Republicans I know who fret that even if he loses the nomination, which he will, he will demand a prime-time speaking slot at the convention. He has no need for the RNC. He already owns primetime.

He is devouring it and all of TV news. You have the power to restrict his diet and ours. Let’s fast. Just for one week.

See what happens—to his numbers and to yours. You might lose a few points, but you will feel better and look better to the rest of the world. Finally, all of us will be free of the guilt and shame prompted by this binge. It just might make a difference for him, too. His poll numbers dropped in late October, as Jim Tankersley pointed out on the Washington Post’s Wonkblog, when his on-air mentions fell behind Marco Rubio and Ben Carson.

Just imagine what that week might be like without his constant presence in our lives and in our heads: a week when TV news isn’t just fomenting fear; where public life is once more a place where some rules of engagement still matter; where there are places our leaders don’t go; where the media decides there is a line it won’t cross and views it won’t enable; where we can all remember who we are and what this country is about.

He is not a politician. He is not a leader. He is a supreme narcissist, and you can deprive him of the one thing that keeps him going—airtime.

TV friends, you can do this. We have all had enough. Give us a break. Just for one week #TurnOffTrump.