Assume the Best

How to make journalism healthier, happier and more hopeful.

In 1999, 25 years ago, the world was gripped by a strange panic: many people thought that a computer bug meant planes would fall from the sky, nuclear plants would malfunction, and chaos would rain on the first day of 2000. As Prince predicted in his song “1999” they thought that the new millennium would bring Judgement Day.

AI generated image from “doomsday” prompt.

This programming glitch was dubbed the Y2K bug and journalists like me spent a lot of time in 1999 reporting on how this was going to blow up the world.

I was living in South Africa back then. I visited a farmer who was so worried that he had stockpiled food, water, weapons and chickens in preparation for Armageddon. He was fortifying fences and told me he feared being overrun by desperate hungry people when law and order collapsed in the New Year.

But I had decided to take Prince’s advice to party like it’s 1999. South African Airways was so keen to prove that it was ready for Y2K, and that its planes weren’t about to fall out of the sky, that it invited executives and journalists to fly over Cape Town on a “Flight of Fantasy” to celebrate the New Year.

1999: Flight of Fantasy

They removed seats to make space for a band and we tried to quell our nerves by drinking champagne and dancing as the clock ticked down towards midnight and the plane circled over Table Mountain.

In the end, midnight arrived without event. We watched the fireworks explode far below us around Table Mountain and then landed safely in the early hours of 2000. The Y2K bug was quickly forgotten. Thankfully, the survivalist farmer didn’t get to use his guns on a hungry mob.  It sometimes takes courage to assume the best.

Cynicism undermines trust

Doomsday thinking is as old as humankind. Negative assumptions about the future and human nature are baked into our psychology, our economics and our religions. They are reinforced by hard-nosed journalists, not to mention algorithms that play on fear and loathing. And that cynicism is growing, undermining trust in institutions including the media, and democracy.

I am not saying journalists were wrong to warn of the dangers of Y2K. Even if it seems like a bit of a joke looking back now. It was a serious threat, and governments spent billions fixing systems so my plane landed safely. But too much doomsday thinking is bad for our own mental health, for the atmosphere in our newsrooms and for the business of journalism. And it is also bad for democracy. (This is an edited version of a speech I gave at the Mental Health in Journalism summit organised by The Self Investigation and the Fred Foundation.)

I believe we need to do more to understand our overactive negativity bias and counter it with some positive balance. That is essential for the future of journalism and the mental health of those who practice it.

Humans have an in-built warning system that helps us scan for threats. That was useful when we were at risk of attack from a sabre-tooth tiger. However, while our environments have become safer, parts of our brains are still stuck in the stone age. 

So headlines about war, political turbulence and climate disaster tip us into in “fight, flight or freeze” mode even if we are relatively safe and secure now.

Most people believe the world is getting worse, as you can see from the poll I took during my speech. The last time this survey was conducted on a global level, in 2016, only 11% of people thought the world was getting better. And that was before the pandemic, Ukraine and Gaza and mounting evidence of global warming.

Brain scans show we quickly store negative events in our long-term memory, but we need to think actively about positive events for 12 seconds or more to store them away. Can you remember the last inspiring news story you read or heard?

Psychologist Rick Hanson says, "Most positive experiences flow through the brain like water through a sieve, while negative ones are caught every time."

The Cynical Genius Illusion

We also tend to believe that people who spread negativity are smarter. It is hardly surprising that cynicism is held in such high regard given that popular culture is full of characters like Sherlock Holmes and Frank Underwood. (Maybe I should stop watching House of Cards with my son – he did ask me the other day – do American politicians really bribe and murder people to get to the top?)

Journalism often rewards such cynical geniuses. Perhaps that is why I am nervous about coming out of the closet as a proponent of a more balanced worldview in front of an audience of journalists – I’m afraid of being seen as stupidly naïve.

As director Richard Curtis said: “If you make a film about a man kidnapping a woman and chaining her to a radiator for five years... it’s called a searingly realistic analysis of society. If I make a film like Love Actually, which is about people falling in love... it’s called a sentimental presentation of an unrealistic world.”

But I have seen the power of challenging our negativity bias for my own mental health and that of my family so I think it is worth the risk of challenging the cynical geniuses.

I have been inspired by prominent thinkers who say we should promote an “assume the best” philosophy if we want to heal ourselves and our societies .

Rather than being imprisoned by our reptilian “flight or fight” brain, we can actively cultivate a “tend and befriend” response to threat, as well as an ethos of hope. During the pandemic, society didn’t break down as the doom-mongers might have predicted and we saw a surge in offers of neighbourly support.

This is not about toxic positivity or avoiding or supressing the negative. But it is about recognising that our biases can be misleading and paralysing.

As American writer Rebecca Solnit says: “Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists take the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting.”

That is essential given the epidemic of burnout that is driving many colleagues to quit the profession. Research shows that cynics earn less, suffer more depression and drink more heavily. Sounds a lot like a lot of journalists I know. They are also more likely to die young and less like to take part in protests or to vote.

Demonising stress

Meanwhile, stress is also bad for us, right? That was what most people answered in my poll. And we’re drowning in stress. 40% of Gen Zs say they feel stressed all or most of the time.

In fact, the belief that stress is bad for you is more dangerous than the stress itself. A Stanford university study found that high levels of stress led to a 43 percent increase in mortality but only if the participants believed it was doing them harm

We have to be careful not to demonise stress. Not everybody who experiences stress is automatically heading for burnout, and not everybody who witnesses or survives violence will necessarily suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. And yet people often confuse everyday stress with chronic conditions like trauma or burnout.

Reinforcing resilience

However, we humans are fundamentally very resilient, especially us journalists.

So next time you find yourself putting a negative label on feelings like stress or anxiety, ask yourself can you give those sensations a different framing, like excitement, for example? Can you imagine you are an athlete about to run a race? That’s what I try to do before public speaking, for example.

You can also try another simple exercise from positive psychology. Most journalists didn’t start out as cynics but as idealists who believe their work has meaning and impact. So ask yourself: What values drive you to do the often dangerous, underpaid job of journalism? My audience came up with words like “truth, justice, curiosity”.

It might seem that reminding yourself of your values is a trivial exercise. But it turns out that thinking about our values is very protective of our mental health. Studies show it can dampen stress, strengthen willpower, increase openness and even improve accuracy. Believing your work is having an impact can even make you less prone to PTSD.

Of course, thinking about your values and reframing stress is not going to end wars, stop climate change, or end the financial worries of many journalists, but it might at least strengthen our resilience that should allow us to keep reporting on difficult topics and in difficult environments.

Hostile environments at work

And when I talk about difficult environments, I don’t just mean war zones. Many workplaces can often feel like hostile environments.

This tendency to “assume the worst” about a dangerous world is often accompanied by a negative view of human nature.

On average, across 30 countries surveyed, only 30% say most people can be trusted. I am glad to say my audience scored better than that: perhaps people who choose to listen to a speech about hope are a less cynical bunch than most?

But I’m guessing that many editorial managers would not say that most people can be trusted. In the leadership courses I run for newsroom managers, they often ask me how to handle reporters who are being “difficult”.

I have seen repeatedly that excellent journalists who are promoted to leadership positions struggle to trust their teams and can become controlling micromanagers.

Too many managers adopt the same style and values that make for successful investigative journalism in how they run their newsrooms. So they are judgemental, critical and always on the lookout for villains. That often creates toxic environments poisoned by blame, exacerbating the burnout problem.

Leaders should instead adopt the style and outlook of constructive journalism. That means cultivating inspiration, curiosity and finding solutions rather than finding fault. That is why I teach the concepts of empathetic leadership and psychological safety. And that culture change has to start with the team leader assuming the best about their reporters and being prepared to be admit their own mistakes.

Hope vs Fear

Finally, we need to think about the kind of stories we write and the impact they have on our own psyche and that of our audiences.

Just over 6 years ago, my then 11-year-old son started hyperventilating. It went on for so long that we took him to hospital. They diagnosed a panic attack. My son had been joining Fridays for Future protests and often found it hard to get to sleep worrying about an apocalyptic future. I switched off the radio when the kids were around. Then I read the book “Factfulness - 10 reasons we’re wrong about the world and why things are better than we think”. My son read it too and I am sure it contributed to his recovery.

Many people have lost hope so they stop getting involved in environmental action. They also stop consuming news about the climate. Of course, we still need to listen to climate scientists warning about the urgent need to act to slow global warming. But if we want to motivate people to act, we should consider using hope rather than fear to communicate. Which poster would get you out on the streets?

News avoidance is clearly on the rise, especially among young people. How should journalists respond? Surveys show people want more reports that give them a sense of hope. Who do teenagers look to for inspiration these days? Internet sensations like Mr Beast who has attracted 26 billion views on YouTube including with charitable stunts like giving a homeless person $10,000. I know Mr Beast is an entertainer, not a journalist, but he knows how to inspire his audience.

Journalists have for too long assumed that they are only responsible for delivering “rational” facts and not thinking about the “emotions” of their audience, as if the two can every really be separated. That’s why Dmitry Shishkin’s user needs model is helpful. Many newsrooms are more actively reporting on potential solutions, even from warzones. And this is helping some of them retain or win back subscribers. It is true that readers are more likely to click on an alarmist headline, but they are more likely to engage with news that inspires them.

Happier, healthier, hopeful

So I come back to Prince. Faced with Judgement Day, his recommendation was to dance. A colleague from Lebanon who is running coverage of the current violence in the Middle East says she has decided to make time for ballet classes to stay sane. This is not about dancing ourselves into oblivion – but about allowing ourselves to believe that it is OK to dance, and to see the positive in ourselves, in our collealgues and in the world, so that we can play our role in defending democracy and the planet.

The next time you find yourself trapped by the cynical genius illusion, remember it is smarter to allow yourself to trust others and believe a better future is possible – to Assume the Best - at least some of the time. That can make for healthier journalists, happier newsrooms and more hopeful stories.

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