The media is nothing if it can’t hold a presidential candidates accountable—if newsrooms and editorialists can’t force a White House aspirant to keep a promise, uphold precedent, and address suspicions that he’s a tool of Moscow.

Journalism is a joke if we let Donald Trump slide.

And so I have an idea for CNN, MSNBC, FOX News and the three broadcast networks:

Stop interviewing Trump, and stop paying his surrogates, until he releases his tax records.

I don’t make this proposal lightly. I understand as well as anybody that interviewing presidential candidates is an important way to inform the public, especially when the questioning is objective, tough, and revealing of the candidate’s character and policies.

While there are far too many patty-cake interviews aired on networks run by executives who see Trump both as a candidate and a cash cow, the process has revealed his racism, authoritarianism, extremism, and anti-intellectualism.

Considering the stakes, I’m happy to temporarily cede that part of media’s role to newspapers, magazines, and news websites while the TV executives in Washington and New York use their leverage for a common good.

Trump must be made to release his tax records because he repeatedly promised to do so; because every major presidential candidate in the modern era has done so; because Richard Nixon released his tax returns while being audited, which is Trump’s latest excuse for reneging; because voters have a right to know how much he pays in taxes and to charities; because there are credible and concerning links between Trump and the Russian government, which is suspected of hacking the Democratic National Committee computers and leaking embarrassing bits.