Café Hope host Rachel Burden: 'Bad news drives clicks – but people still want uplifting stories too'

Conflict in Ukraine and the Middle East, the re-election of a man to the top job in the White House that comedian John Mulaney famously compared to a horse being allowed into a hospital, followed shortly by $1 trillion wiped off the stock market amid a seemingly random tariff war certainly make the world look like an unfunny joke.

And these are just some of the events Rachel Burden could be talking about when she says, "Anyone who works in news media these days, whether that’s radio, digital or TV, is aware that there's only so much that an audience can take."

In a fine case of nominative determinism, the Radio 5 Live weekday breakfast show presenter has frequently found herself breaking bad news to the nation as it has woken up over the last 14 years. She feels the despair.

"People are turning off the news because it's overwhelming. They feel they’ve no agency and are curating their own universe in terms of the media they consume." For all the reasons above, that may well now include Café Hope, a Radio 4 show she has also been hosting since last year.

In keeping with a slew of recent books such as Utopia for Realists and Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong about the World – and Why Things Are Better than You Think and other initiatives like The Uplift on the CBS News app, Radio 4 "wanted to do something around finding a bit of hope and optimism in a very dark world", explains Burden. "I jumped at the chance to be involved because it’s just so different to what I do every day."

Although she is careful to stress that, alongside the rolling news, her 5 Live show also tries to make “the audience smile or give them opportunities to feel hopeful”, the format for Café Hope revolves around a virtual coffee shop where guests drop by to talk about positive things they have done or are trying to achieve in their lives.

"It’s such a simple concept," she explains. "It’s a space where you’re sitting down, taking time out in a little community of people who all have very different backgrounds and life experiences but are joined together by doing really lovely things for other people.

"They’re not already well-known or successful, or have big established charities, they’re people who have the day-to-day pressures that everyone has but they do something extra and it is usually prompted by what we call a ‘sofa moment’ – ie the thing that took them from sitting on the sofa, frustrated with the way the world works, to getting off the sofa and doing something about it. And that’s a reason to celebrate them."

But is it the job of journalists to search out good news stories? Didn’t TV anchor and newsreader Martyn Lewis run into a wall of criticism when he suggested having more positive stories in news bulletins in 1993? "That was years ago," replies Burden, a touch defensively. "Local radio, where I started in journalism, has always done this kind of thing brilliantly, so I see what we do as an extension of stuff that’s been going on for years.

"I don’t think there’s a huge difference between what I do on the 5 Live breakfast show and here, other than leaving behind the cynicism you need on a news programme. You can take this show entirely at face value but that’s not to say we don’t ask questions like, ‘How do you deal with conflicts of interest?’ or whatever."

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Guests who have dropped in for a virtual coffee have included a woman who lost her child and set up an organisation called Emily’s Star to provide boxes of the special kit parents need when a baby is born prematurely, a group of volunteers who use drones to track lost pets, a man with Down's syndrome who runs his own business, homeless people who have become tour guides, and a woman who rescues chickens.

"Yes, bad news, conflict and division drive clicks,” she says, “but there is a space and there is an appetite for stuff that people find uplifting and reassuring, and Café Hope is a place where they can come and find that."

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Café Hope continues Monday at 9:45am on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds, where previous episodes are available on catch-up.

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