Artist Joakim Lloyd Raboff

Here’s a new piece for the Resurfaced series. I don’t do much political art, but this project felt important somehow. If not to you, at least to me right now.

Sometimes I feel like a hostage. A victim of hijackers or kidnappers where the culprits are the established media. I don’t think I have an unhealthy ingestion level, but what I do listen to and read, tends to put a large emphasis on two main headline topics: the pandemic and the climate. I find this to be even more true now that Trump is off-center stage.

Granted, both are extraordinarily important issues, regardless of whether or not you believe in all or just some of what the media broadcasts 24/7. If you don’t believe in either, well, there you go.

Like the next guy, I am easily seduced or hypnotized by big fat headlines. And so, I often forget that the media’s business model is fundamentally about generating engagement – just like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, Snapchat, Google, and every other social media outlet out there. The more eyeballs they attract, the more advertising money they rake in.

The main difference between traditional media and “SoMe” is that because traditional media has been around a lot longer and has content produced by a team of purportedly unbiased reporters and journalists, it continues to enjoy a higher level of believability (if not authoritativeness).Folks in my generation still tend to rely on old-school media brands to get their lion’s share of “indisputable facts” and opinions. And since it’s no secret that many – including your’s truly – choose news sources that reinforce rather than challenge opinions, you don’t need a degree in behavioral psychology to grasp how we find ourselves in an echo chamber, shutting out all and any opposing views and thoughts that question our opinions or facts. We become hostages of the media and eventually victims of Stockholm syndrome. Feeling mushy about a media brand is dangerous stuff.

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