There is an increasing likelihood that the 2012 candidates will decide that a better strategy is to avoid the media, hoping to employ unlimited corporate resources to deliver their messages without scrutiny.
This constitutes a major threat to the relevancy of news reporting and analysis. If the media does not fight back now, it will never regain its relevance.
Sure, the media can continue its inane blather, and it can continue serving as a tool for any campaign whose statements it decides to report.
Is that why people go into journalism?
Moreover, the media -- mainstream, lamestream and otherwise -- has the power to improve our political climate without losing or costing itself a dime and maintaining its relevancy.
Ideally, of course, one would like some real discussion, with follow-up questions and fact challenges. Media that actually did that would be of enormous value to the country, but it would require a change in format. It would require risking a guest it believes draws viewers no longer appearing. It is stunning but not surprising, for example, that Dick Cheney has made the rounds of TV without ever being asked why he ignored warnings prior to September 11.
Here are a few new totally non-partisan rules, however, that media, including this one, could adopt that would maintain their own relevancy and foster a more accountable politics at the same time:
In Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court discovered that the original intent of the Founders was to have corporations treated as "persons" for purposes of the First Amendment, but it was clear that nothing in their opinion would preclude Congress from requiring disclosure.
The media need not await Congress to act. They have it within their power to set their own rules regarding guests' and authors' financial and other conflict-of-interest disclosures. They have it within their own power not to cover campaigns of candidates avoiding them.
As long as the rules are stated and enforced equally, there can be no credible claim of bias.
Fox, of course, will not do this.
But everyone else can and, in so doing, elevate their own credibility.
It takes only one to start.
Follow Paul Abrams on Twitter: www.twitter.com/pabrams2001
Jerrold S. Parker: Have We Forgotten Our 9/11 Heroes?
Glenn C. Altschuler: Who's Got the Helicopters?
And...if the rest of the media does not do those things, they will also be exposed.
They wouldn't exist in a nation where the press did its job.
2. Political candidates have no obligation to talk to news outlets.
(Also not on Facebook and unlikely to be until coerced by force of law.)