Fact-checkers - The Self-Investigation

Time to think, time to connect, time to plan

Th3s3lf — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 10:05:32 +0000

This is the fifth in a series of blog posts, culminating with a toolkit for fact-checkers on mental health and well-being. Learn more about the program here.

By Emma Thomasson, Training Manager of the program Mental Health Leadership for Fact-Checkers.

Journalists and fact-checkers often describe themselves as adrenaline junkies. They love the thrill of breaking news and the sense that the work they do matters. But that means that they often struggle to differentiate between what is urgent and what is important. In many newsrooms, the urgency of responding to external events — be it an election, a coup or a natural disaster — means there never seems to be time to think about important, but non-urgent matters, like the wellbeing of the team. For managers, that can mean it is hard to prioritise making strategic plans, or checking in with their staff, or making sure their own needs for guidance and career development are being met.

That is one of the main takeaways of the participants in the Mental Health Leadership for Fact-Checkers Program, a 6-month program of training and coaching for leaders of fact-checking organizations run by The Self-Investigation. Participants noted that the program was particularly valuable because it forced those leaders to block time in their calendars to think, learn and share experiences with peers in a similar position.

1. Stop working as if everything is an emergency

As the program drew to a close, several participants pledged to keep up the habit of reserving slots in their calendar to break the lure of working in a “crazy busy” way described by emergency room doctor Daria Long in her TED talk.

Long recommends applying the ER principles of triage to prioritise everyday challenges.

Red – immediately life-threatening
Yellow – serious, but not immediately life-threatening
Green – minor
Black – the worst scenarios, when nothing can be done

Instead of reacting to everything as if it is a category red emergency, as we often do in the newsroom, we need to work out when things are not that serious and find ways to delegate them, or make time for them when the real reds issues have been dealt with. We also need to beware of spending too much time worrying about some things in the black category, when it may be better to admit that is a waste of effort and move on.

Another way of deciding what to prioritise is to focus first on those tasks that are both urgent and important, an idea said to have been practised by former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Tasks that are important but not urgent can be scheduled for later, those that are urgent but less important can be delegated and those that are not urgent or important can be deleted.

Jency Jacob, managing editor of BOOM Live in India, says he has an informal rule that he does not want to have meetings during lunch hour. That gives him time to eat lunch at a fixed time and also flexibility to relax post-lunch before the next meetings are scheduled.

Lorena Martinez, Head of Editorial Operations in Europe at Logically Facts says: “I usually have a packed agenda and often find myself multitasking. To prioritize important tasks, I block off dedicated time in my calendar each week to ensure I have uninterrupted focus time.”

Others pledged to implement a rule that they have a 15-minute buffer between meetings. That might mean that one hour meetings are kept to 45 minutes.

2. Make time to connect

When faced with a deluge of news, teams struggle to make time to connect on a human level, particularly if some people are working remotely. That makes misunderstandings and conflict more likely. Many of the participants in the program highlighted the value of sharing experiences with other fact-checking organizations from across the globe during the program and pledged to make more time for building relationships in their teams.

Blanka Zöldi, Editor-in-Chief at Lakmusz in Hungary, says every second Monday her team works a short day and holds a team meeting in a cafe for about an hour and a half where people can share any topic on their minds.

“It’s a good opportunity to zoom out from the rush of the daily work,” she noted, “and to reflect on “bigger” professional questions such as the most efficient tools, formats for fact-checking, to reflect on current events and, if needed, to talk about our priorities and strategies as a team. But, most importantly, it’s an opportunity to be together regularly, to listen to each other, and to create a safe space to ask questions, to talk about any worries or fears, and also to share what interests and motivates each of us.”

Alessandra Monnerat, Assistant Editor of Brazil’s Estadão Verifica, has organised a monthly online “buddy” coffee. She pairs up people in her team for a 15-minute informal meeting: “The feedback I received was very positive; some of them noted they discovered new things about their peers they would never find out by simply working together in a virtual environment. I think activities like these are important to build confidence and teamwork.”

3. Make a plan for accountability

The fact that the program combined workshops with one-on-one coaching helped to hold leaders accountable for their plans to support their own and their team’s mental health.

However, now that the program is ending, we asked participants to come up with a plan to help them set and reach short-, medium- and long-term goals for themselves and their teams. We asked them to answer these questions to develop a personal action plan.

WHAT actions (behaviors, practices, policies)
HOW you will do it and be held accountable (tools, resources, metrics)
WHO can help support you in your commitment (team, audience, community)

Katarina Subasic, editor in AFP’s fact-checking team for Europe, says she plans to set reminders in her calendar so she sticks to her plan.

Other participants have pledged to ask peers, colleagues or friends and family to check in on them to make sure they are sticking to their plans.

You just read the lessons learnt by our English-speaking cohort, if you speak Spanish don’t miss the takeaways from the Spanish-speaking cohort.

The feature image has been AI-generated.

The post Time to think, time to connect, time to plan first appeared on The Self-Investigation.

Being Open About Our Errors: When is it OK to ask for help, seek feedback or admit mistakes?

Th3s3lf — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 14:44:35 +0000

Psychological safety: essential to promote teamwork, performance and care.

This is the fourth in a series of blog posts, culminating later this year with a guide for fact-checkers on mental health and well-being. Learn more about the program here.

By Emma Thomasson, Training Manager of the program Mental Health Leadership for Fact-Checkers.

What is psychological safety?

The job of fact-checking is all about establishing more certainty about what is true, engaging critical thinking and correcting false information. That doesn’t leave much room for mistakes, nor for admitting weakness or vulnerability, at least not in public.

Against that backdrop, it can be a challenge for managers of fact-checking teams to create a culture of psychological safety. This is defined as a workplace culture where it is OK for employees to admit to mistakes, ask questions, express vulnerability or suggest new ideas.

There is often confusion over what this term means. It is sometimes thought of as a counterpoint to physical safety. So when preparing for a dangerous or potentially disturbing assignment, journalists are encouraged to think about both physical safety and psychological safety (seen as synonymous with mental wellbeing). However, the term has taken on a wider meaning in the context of team leadership due to research by Harvard professor Amy Edmondson.

Edmondson says that team members only engage in close collaboration when they feel “psychologically safe”, knowing that “questions are appreciated, ideas are welcome, and errors and failure are discussable”.

“People can focus on the work without being tied up in knots about what others might think of them. They know that being wrong won’t be a fatal blow to their reputation,” she said.

Edmondson made a name for herself by studying how teams and organizations deal with mistakes. During research into drug errors in hospitals, she came to the counterintuitive conclusion that better teams seem to make more mistakes, not fewer. She eventually realized that doctors and nurses in these high-performing teams don’t necessarily make more mistakes, but they report more because they don’t fear retribution for being open about problems.

Edmondson’s insights have since been applied to many other organizations and contexts, including Google, which studied thousands of teams and concluded that the top-performing groups had five dynamics in common, with psychological safety being the most important of them.

The other key factors cited by Google are:

Dependability: members reliably complete quality work on time
Structure and clarity: a team has clear roles, goals, and plan
Meaning: team members have a sense of purpose in their work
Impact: members believe their work makes a difference.

When I was drawing this illustration of the Google conclusions at a workshop, I made a spelling mistake. Normally, I would have started afresh, but I decided it was a good way of illustrating the importance of being open about errors.

Looking at this diagram, it is clear that teams in the media industry generally have a very top-heavy pyramid. Journalists usually have a strong sense of “meaning” and “impact”. Perhaps even too much, which promotes an unhealthy obsession with work that drives us to burnout. Meanwhile, during my workshops and training sessions, newsroom leaders I have worked with admit that their teams often lack psychological safety, as well as structure and clarity.

Active listening is key for promoting psychological safety

One of the most powerful ways leaders can cultivate this culture is to practice active listening, which involves listening without judging or jumping to conclusions, and refraining from imposing your own opinions or solutions. That might sound easy but we often find it hard to resist the temptation to interrupt, while we usually jump in to fill any uncomfortable silence in a conversation. But if managers can master the technique, they often find it liberating as they no longer feel under pressure to fix the person’s problems. Often, a team member who feels truly heard will feel supported to come up with their own solution.

Here are some tips for how to practice active listening:

Face the speaker and have eye contact.
“Listen” to non-verbal cues too.
Don’t interrupt.
Listen without judging, or jumping to conclusions.
Don’t start planning what to say next.
Show that you’re listening
Don’t impose your opinions or solutions.

Here are some other ways that a leader can promote a feeling of safety in a team:

Model vulnerability – show your own humanity and humility as a leader.
Admit your own ignorance – celebrate mistakes as learning opportunities rather than shaming people who are brave enough to say they don’t know.
Invite participation eg: implement the rule in meetings that no one talks twice before everyone has a chance to talk once.
Offer feedback, celebrate success – give as much praise as criticism
Don’t avoid conflict – address problems before they spiral out of control
Encourage feedback of your leadership – don’t react to feedback with defensiveness

What are the obstacles to psychological safety?

Promoting psychological safety often demands a big shift in organization culture. If a manager wants to encourage team members to admit to mistakes or suggest new ideas, she will need to acknowledge her own fallibility and be open to constructive criticism of her own leadership. It can be time-consuming to check in with team members to make sure that psychological safety is combined with accountability to turn ideas into action.

As Rosemary Igbeka from FactCheckHub noted, “It is important to be vulnerable: we are all human. We can make mistakes.” And Eric Litke, Senior Editor, Fact Check at USA TODAY, pointed out, “It can be tricky admitting failure. I tell junior staff: ‘Here are some things I screwed up along the way.’”

The whole idea of psychological safety is very rooted in Anglo-Saxon organizational culture where challenging authority is more acceptable than in other parts of the world. Employees from countries like Serbia, Nigeria and India that have a tradition of respect for hierarchy, might find it harder to express disagreement with their managers than colleagues from countries like Britain and the United States. Likewise, it might be easier for a manager in a flat-hierarchy start-up to admit fallibility than a boss in a large top-down traditional media house.

Here are some reflections from our participants:

Katarina Subasic, AFP digital investigations editor: “In Serbia, kids in school are not encouraged to ask questions or disagree… kids are not allowed to oppose adults – hierarchy is so strict.”

Eric Litke, Senior Editor, Fact Check at USA TODAY, said: “In the US, we have an independent mindset, which sometimes means we have an oversized concept of our place in the world that makes us very assertive.”

Karen Rebelo, deputy editor, BOOM LIVE, added: “We have a flat hierarchy. We are free to speak our mind. We say if we don’t know something.”

To be clear, psychological safety isn’t always about being nice and agreeing with everyone.

This is not about creating environments where people think it is fine to slack off, or make mistakes without consequence. But if colleagues are afraid to speak up or experiment, organizations will miss out on open exchange, learning and innovation.

And successful teams need to be able to disagree and deal with conflict in a constructive way.

So managers need to be alert to their own conflict management style if they want to promote good teamwork and be prepared to vary their style depending on the situation. Sometimes, it pays to be more assertive, while other times a more collaborative approach can be more effective.

You just read the lessons learnt by our English-speaking cohort, if you speak Spanish don’t miss the takeaways from the Spanish-speaking cohort.

The feature image has been AI-generated.

The post Being Open About Our Errors: When is it OK to ask for help, seek feedback or admit mistakes? first appeared on The Self-Investigation.

Digital Boundaries: What fact-checkers need to know about promoting focus and protecting rest

Th3s3lf — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 08:36:27 +0000

This is the third in a series of blog posts, culminating later this year with a guide for fact-checkers on mental health and well-being. Learn more about the program here.

By Emma Thomasson, Training Manager of the program Mental Health Leadership for Fact-Checkers.

Our third training session was led by Pablo M. Fernández, author and podcast host, and regional manager for Latin America and the Caribbean at the International Fund for Public Interest Media. He was previously the executive and journalistic director of Chequeado and an editor at Argentina’s La Nación so he has firsthand experience of the challenges of setting boundaries while managing a fact-checking operation.

Here’s what we learned:

1. Newsrooms have been slow to adapt to digital communications

There have been three milestones in the last few decades that have made it harder for journalists to set boundaries. First came the mass adoption of the Internet in the mid to late 1990s, then came the development of smartphones that allowed the newsroom to follow you everywhere, and finally the widespread adoption of remote work during the Covid pandemic, which meant the end to physical limits on when and where journalists are expected to work.

However, most newsrooms have not stopped to think about what these shifts mean in practice and how we might need to change our ways of communicating to respond, and to help journalists and fact-checkers protect themselves in our always-on culture.

2. If everything is urgent, nothing is. Clarify your response time

Most of us suffer from an “urgency bias”: beeping, flashing notifications on our phones and laptops make it hard for us to decide which messages really need our urgent attention. Journalists and fact-checkers, particularly those who work in a breaking news environment, are hardwired to believe they have to respond to everything quickly.

Darria Long, an emergency room doctor, urges us to stop describing our lives as “crazy busy” and start using the same kind of triage practices that are standard in hospitals to help us determine what is really urgent: “Here’s the truth: when you’re running around in ‘Crazy Busy Mode’, you’re simply harming your ability to handle the ‘Busy’,” Long says in her TED talk.

Practical tip: Research shows that non-urgent work emails sent during non-work time feel more urgent for receivers than for senders. The sender underestimates the stress that the receiver perceives. In fact, one out of every two people assumes you want an answer in 30 minutes. The sender of messages can counteract this urgency bias by explicitly noting when they expect a response.

3. Protect your focus – do a digital check-up to hack yourself

Multitasking is glorified in our profession (it is sometimes mentioned as a required skill in journalism job ads), but research shows we are more likely to make mistakes if we try to do more than one thing at once. Every time we are interrupted, it takes 23 minutes on average for us to get back into flow.

One study showed that people who are interrupted while trying to complete a task experience more stress, higher frustration, time pressure and effort. Participants in the program told us they are most likely to be distracted by messaging apps like WhatsApp and Slack.

(I am writing this on a train sitting next to a woman who is on a conference call making it very difficult for me to focus on the task at hand – I keep meaning to buy noise-canceling headphones, and now it feels more urgent).

Practical tip: Pablo encouraged us to do a regular digital check-up to find out how much time we are spending on different tools each day (on the day of the training I discovered I had already used WhatsApp for 26 minutes).

He then advised us to make conscious decisions about when and how we can be distracted, rather than allowing the default settings on our phones and computers to determine that for us. Many participants have already limited their use of social media, particularly Twitter.

“Leaving everything turned on is like living with a Christmas tree covered with flashing lights,” Pablo said. “You have agency.”

4. What does ASAP really mean? We need to agree on communication preferences for our teams

We all need to be much clearer about when we need an answer to our messages so that the recipient can prioritize, and hopefully switch off when they are not working. Be clear about when you need a response. An example: a colleague sent a long voice message on WhatsApp at 5pm on a Friday evening but accompanied it with a note: “Not urgent, you can listen on Monday.”

Given our urgency bias, managers should also use email tools that allow them to schedule non-urgent messages to only be delivered during working hours.

Pablo introduced the idea of the priority pyramid to help teams to agree on which communication tools they prefer for different kinds of messages. “If the team can agree that the phone is for really urgent things, if no-one is calling you out of hours, you don’t need to be checking,” he said.

5. Remember we are all different

Some people like to chat online all the time, but team leaders should give people the option not to keep checking messages. It can be a helpful team exercise to discover whether you have any shared values that can help guide how you approach your work and how you collaborate.

Many of the participants said they value “collaboration” highly, but that might conflict with another common value among journalists of “freedom”. It can help a team discuss and agree digital boundaries if they are aware of these potentially competing values.

How our team put this into practice

It’s one thing to learn about setting digital boundaries, and it’s another to implement them, especially in a busy fact-checking organization where the news can happen at any minute. Pablo challenged the participants to try to make it through breakfast the next day without checking their phones. Not many of us succeeded.

Here are some tips our group collected from Pablo’s talk for handling different tools:

Email – check-in batches or at set times, create rules, schedule messages.
Social media – turn off notifications, add friction such as Screen Time limits, or even go cold turkey and uninstall the apps from your phone!
Slack – use status updates (to show when you are available), schedule messages, or agree as a team on how you want to use it.
Tweak notifications – it is not just a question of on/off: you can set up preferences so you only allow certain apps in certain places, such as some in the office or some only at home.
You can nominate people who can call you out of hours

Eric Litke, Senior Editor for the Fact-Check Team at USA TODAY, said: “I liked the idea of a digital checkup a couple times a year, to be aware of where my time is going (on the phone especially), so those are intentional choices about where to spend time.”

One participant Karen Rebelo, Deputy Editor at BOOM Live, said that when she has an article to finish, she puts her phone in airplane mode or in another room for an hour. In the evenings, she also uses a blue light filter and sets her screen to the monochrome to try to make mindless scrolling less tempting. But she also says we shouldn’t be too self-critical about our digital addictions.

“We should not beat ourselves up about it. Tech companies have labs working on how to get users hooked. It is designed to be addictive.”

Pablo agreed: “Use screentime or quality time limits but don’t be a hypochondriac.” He notes that just like the tech firms, we can also hack our own psychology by using tools like “to- do” lists to keep us focused on one project at a time.

“When we cross something out on our “to-do” list, it gives us a rush of dopamine,” he said.

You just read the lessons learnt by our English-speaking cohort, if you speak Spanish don’t miss the takeaways from the Spanish-speaking cohort.

The feature image has been AI-generated.

The post Digital Boundaries: What fact-checkers need to know about promoting focus and protecting rest first appeared on The Self-Investigation.

It’s OK to take care of yourself: What fact-checkers need to know about online trauma

Th3s3lf — Tue, 07 May 2024 09:33:41 +0000

This is the second in a series of blog posts exploring this topic, culminating later this year with a guide for fact-checkers on mental health and well-being. Learn more about the program here.

By Emma Thomasson, Training Manager of the program Mental Health Leadership for Fact-Checkers.

Our second training session was led by Naseem Miller, senior health editor at The Journalist’s Resource, a project of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. Here’s what we learned.

1. There are a few key terms that are important to understand: vicarious trauma, moral injury and online harassment

We started with key terms to understand this topic, to help get us on the same page.

Vicarious trauma

Journalists can experience vicarious trauma from witnessing and reporting on traumatic events, even if they do not directly experience the traumatic event themselves. It can be a pathway to psychological injury, including social withdrawal, anxiety and PTSD.

Here are some key points about vicarious trauma:

Images on a screen can take on a life-like quality in the brain.
Viewers feel shame: “How can I be distressed? I’m not reporting from the field.”
Images might be a reminder of personal experience, which risks retraumatization.
Compared to reporters on the ground, viewers don’t know the full story. There is no context for the images they see online, nor a natural beginning or end.
It is a different route to PTSD, not a different condition.
Journalists of color and LGBTQ+ journalists are at higher risk (particularly if they report on communities they belong to).

Moral injury

Fact-checkers might be exposed to moral injury, defined as perpetrating, failing to prevent, bearing witness to, or learning about acts that deeply transgress our moral/ethical values. This is distinct from vicarious trauma, but might also result from watching traumatic events online.

That can be compounded by the sense of a betrayal of what’s right by someone who holds authority in a high-stakes situation, such as a manager in a news organization.

Moral injury may prompt feelings of shame, guilt, outrage, sorrow, disgust and despair.

Online harassment

Fact-checkers are also at risk of online harassment, which ranges from nasty comments to severe bullying to explicit sexual and death threats via emails, social media and text messages. They might face organized attacks from state-sponsored trolls.

At particular risk of online harassment are: women, people of color, ethnic minorities and people from the LGBTQ+ communities. This is prompting some professionals to leave social media or even quit their jobs.

2. Fact-checkers are at risk, but may be too ashamed to ask for help

Viewing distressing content online can carry some of the same risks as reporting from the field, but people who are affected might not seek help because they feel shame that they are not putting themselves at the same physical risk as reporters or protagonists on the ground.

Katarina Subasic, editor in AFP’s fact-checking team for Europe, put it this way: “Who are we to feel bad? We are not the ones who are suffering.”

She added: “If they say they are affected, people are worried they won’t get the big assignment.

But Naseem Miller stressed: “We need to break the selfless-activist mindset. It’s OK to care about yourself.”

3. Organizations and managers can help with vicarious trauma by noticing the signs and symptoms, and then taking action

There are warning signs of problems that colleagues can look for. These include the following:

Colleague is irritable/snappy/emotional.
Appears overwhelmed by work, unable to focus, withdrawn.
Performance slips.
Frequently off sick/fatigued.
Shows little care in appearance.
Reduced motivation, changes routine (stops participation in sport, social activities).
Appears to be excessively drinking/taking drugs.

In response, organizations and managers can take action in the following ways:

Check-in on staff regularly: managing vicarious trauma and moral injury is a conversation that never stops. Keep having that conversation.
Create support networks of colleagues.
Create a debrief process for people working on potentially triggering stories.
Encourage colleagues not to check videos on WhatsApp or outside of work. Only look at it on computers/laptops: don’t take it to bed with you!
Put in a rotation system so that not only one fact-checker/editor is working on triggering stories.
Put videos on mute unless you have to listen.

There may be times to seek access to professional help. However, in some places, seeking therapy is still taboo, or there are few therapists available or their help is very expensive: “In my culture, we don’t go to therapists,” one participant said.

4. Organizations need policies to prevent and respond to online abuse

Online abuse is often seen as an occupational hazard for journalists and fact-checkers, but as trolls have become more organized and vicious, responding has become a matter of media freedom. Here are some steps organizations can take to protect their reporters:

Use safety assessment procedures to decide whether a story is worth the risk.
Know your trolls: are they local, global, campaign-specific, any patterns?
Are your systems blocking as much abuse as possible?
Clear guidelines on how staff use social media and share personal data.
Offer tools to delete old/embarrassing tweets and posts.
Is there a need for training on managing online abuse?
Communicate what support is available to staff who suffer abuse.
If a colleague is under attack, help them to get off the platform and shut down the account: don’t engage with trolls.
Provide legal support.

However, policies can only go so far, especially as fact-checkers feel a conflict between the pressure to build an online community and brand, and the need to protect online safety: “I do share pictures of food and exercise, but that’s as personal as I get,” one fact-checker said.

Also, there is the danger of the Streisand effect, when an attempt to hide or remove personal information backfires by increasing public awareness of it. It is named after American singer and actress Barbra Streisand, who tried to suppress a photograph showing coastal erosion near her clifftop residence in California but that effort drew far greater attention to the previously obscure photograph. (Source: Wikipedia)

Sometimes fact-checkers and their managers have to accept that online abuse and potential trauma are the unavoidable price they pay for their jobs. What’s crucial is entering with open eyes and preparing a plan of action for supporting yourself and your colleagues before an event occurs.

5. There are many ways to care for oneself

During the workshop, our participants discussed other self-care tips, which included:

Have a ritual to signal to your body and mind that your working day is over (especially when working remotely): light a candle, read a book (pretend you are commuting on a train), change your clothes.
Focus on what you can control.
Hang on to hope (for example, actively seek out solutions/constructive stories).
Find hobbies and activities that bring you joy.
Try a mindfulness or spirituality app like Spiri or Calm

Naseem shared a poem during the workshop that we wanted to close with:

“O Me! O Life!” by Walt Whitman:

“The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here—that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

You just read the lessons learnt by our English-speaking cohort. If you speak Spanish and want to read some learnings of the Spanish-cohort, click here.

The feature image has been AI-generated.

The post It’s OK to take care of yourself: What fact-checkers need to know about online trauma first appeared on The Self-Investigation.

You Are Not Alone! Four Lessons on Mental Health and Burnout for Fact-Checkers and Journalists

Th3s3lf — Mon, 08 Apr 2024 08:15:08 +0000

Training Manager Emma Thomasson shares insights from our first English-language session of the Mental Leadership for Fact-Checkers program.

At The Self-Investigation, we have launched Mental Health Leadership for Fact-Checkers, a pilot training and coaching program supported by the International Fact-Checking Network. With five workshops and four coaching calls over the course of 6 months, we’re supporting 14 fact-checking organizations in two cohorts (one in English and one in Spanish) on crucial topics like creating a culture of psychological safety in the team, the basics of mental health and burnout prevention and the importance of digital boundaries.

This is the first in a series of blog posts exploring this topic, culminating later this year with a guide for fact-checkers on mental health and well-being. Learn more about the program here.

We just kicked off our first training session, led by The Self Investigation co-founder and coach Kim Brice, about mental health and burnout, and here’s what we learned:

1. Managers face many common challenges and questions.

Managers of fact-checkers from different organizations across the globe often feel alone with the problems they encounter when running their teams. But regardless of the country or organizational size, they actually face very similar challenges in supporting their teams’ mental health, from India to Brazil, Nigeria to Hungary.

The top issues participants face include:

How to manage different cultures and generations, particularly when working remotely. It is great that younger employees are being more open about mental health challenges, and managers want to support that, but they also need to get the job done. How can you drive your team to perform while respecting work/life balance? And how can you do that when managing a remote team and it is harder to tell how people are really coping?
How to deal with an always-on culture?
How to deal with harassment/smear campaigns

We will explore the answers to these issues in future workshops and blogs.

2. Fact-checkers are at high risk for burnout

Signals and behaviors that suggest somebody is at risk of burnout include feeling intensely tired, restless sleep, negativity, irritability, feeling in a rush and experiencing more aches and pains than usual.

Poor sleep is the most common issue reported by participants in our program. Of course we all feel these symptoms from time to time, but what characterizes burnout is if these problems have been going on for 6 months or more and you feel you have lost control of what you need to do at work and in your private life.

We shouldn’t rush to diagnose burnout and we should remember that stress is an essential part of everyday life. Sometimes it can be helpful to reframe “stress” as excitement, motivation and even joy: after all most of us went into this profession because it is our vocation and we love the sense of purpose and accomplishment it gives us. But that is precisely why it is so important to learn how to set boundaries and look after ourselves.

That is especially true for fact-checkers. They tick several boxes of risk factors for burnout:

High exposure to violence. Looking at disturbing images can trigger vicarious trauma.
Emotionally complex stories: Fact checkers are often engaged in the most contentious issues or topics of the day
Social media exposure: Continually trawling the darkest side of the Internet can erode your faith in humanity.

3. Managers walk a tightrope: they need to protect their teams and themselves

Managers, particularly those in the middle of the hierarchy, play a key role when it comes to improving the wellbeing of their staff. A 10-country survey shows that managers have just as much of an impact on people’s mental health as their spouse (both 69%) — and even more of an impact than their doctor (51%) or therapist (41%).

This is how two managers in the program define a mentally healthy workplace:

Sophie Nicholson, Deputy Editor in Chief, Digital Investigation, AFP: “A workplace where people feel included and aren’t afraid to say what they think, where they enjoy spending their time, feel motivated, and do not feel uncomfortable with their work or the people around them and know where to seek advice and help if necessary.”
Jency Jacob, Managing Editor, BOOM Live: “A safe place where professionals are able to set boundaries and have a work-life balance. They should also feel free to express their views without fear of discrimination or retribution.”

Good managers have high standards and care about their teams, but that often means that they don’t pay enough attention to their own mental health: this survey shows that 82% regularly finish work feeling mentally and/or physically exhausted and 59% are unable to relax or pause activity. And the fact managers push themselves so hard, means they often demand the same of their teams, creating unforgiving expectations and unhealthy workplace cultures.

4. Small actions can make a big difference for teams and individuals

One of the easiest things managers can do for themselves, and their teams, is to include more breaks in their working day, and put them in the calendar, even micro breaks of a few minutes. “I commit to not do back to back meetings and schedule breaks,” one participant said.

Some other ideas that came up:

Managers should encourage and model self-care for their teams and for themselves.
We all need to normalize conversations about mental health, if possible making regular check-ins part of team meetings and holding more regular 1-on-1s.
Schedule meeting-free time for teams.
This wouldn’t be The Self Investigation without self-awareness: be alert to signals that you are over your limit, be that irritability, insomnia or headaches.

You just read the lessons learnt by our English-speaking cohort. If you speak Spanish and want to read some learnings of the Spanish-cohort, click here.

The feature image has been AI-generated.

The post You Are Not Alone! Four Lessons on Mental Health and Burnout for Fact-Checkers and Journalists first appeared on The Self-Investigation.

Meet the “Mental Health Leadership for Fact-Checkers” Cohort Members

Th3s3lf — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 14:52:09 +0000

In this mega-election year with more than 60 countries hosting elections, multiple global conflicts and an onslaught of harrowing images on social media (both real and AI-generated), journalists and fact-checkers need mental health resources more than ever. As Naseem Miller said recently in a National Press Club panel we participated in, journalism is a trauma-facing profession, and few face trauma more directly than fact-checkers, who often must look directly at images of violence, abuse and misinformation in order to assess its accuracy.

At The Self-Investigation, we have just launched Mental Health Leadership for Fact-Checkers, a pilot training and coaching program supported by the International Fact-Checking Network. With five trainings and four coaching calls over the course of 6 months, we’re supporting 14 fact-checking organizations in two cohorts (one in English and one in Spanish) on crucial topics like creating a culture of psychological safety in the team, the basics of mental health and burnout prevention and the importance of digital boundaries.

These are the 14 organisations that are part of the two cohorts:

English:	Spanish:
AFP	Aos Fatos
BOOM Live	Bolivia Verifica
Estadao Verifica	Chequeado
Factcheckhub	Colombia Check
Lakmusz	Cotejo.info
Lead Stories	Factchequeado
Logically Facts	Verificat

We’ve been overwhelmed by the enthusiastic response online. We received dozens of applications, and as this is a pilot, we had to turn down many. But we’ve designed this for longevity — we’re developing a guide that we can make available to fact-checkers around the world, and with success, we hope to make this coaching and training program available as an ongoing and expansive program.

Below, please meet our initial cohort of participants, and stay tuned to our blog and newsletter for more updates in the months to come about what we’re learning and discussing.

Meet the seven fact-checking leaders of the English-language cohort:

Additional participants from the selected fact-checking organisations:

Kritika Goel – Logically Facts (India)
Rosemary Igebka – Factcheckhub (Nigeria)
Szilvi Német – Lakmusz (Hungary)
Karen Rebelo – BOOM Live (India)
Bradley Sylvester – USA Today (United States)
Katarina Subasic – AFP (Serbia)

Here are the names of the seven selected leaders of the Spanish-language cohort:

Tamoa Calzadilla – Factchequeado (US)
Patricia Cusicanqui Hanssen – Bolivia Verifica (Bolivia)
Fernanda da Escóssia – Aos Fatos (Brazil)
Matías Di Santi – Chequeado (Argentina)
José Felipe Sarmiento Abella – Colombia Check (Colombia)
Alba Tobella – Verificat (Spain)
Karla Torres – Cotejo.info (Venezuela)

Get to know more about them here.

The post Meet the “Mental Health Leadership for Fact-Checkers” Cohort Members first appeared on The Self-Investigation.

Open Call for Applications: Mental Health Leadership for Fact-Checkers

Th3s3lf — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 12:06:57 +0000

The Self-Investigation is launching a new mental health training and coaching program for leaders at fact-checking organizations. Applications are due by February 8, 2024.

[Convocatoria en español aquí]

The Self-Investigation today announces the Mental Health Leadership for Fact-Checkers program, a rigorous, 6-month program of training and coaching for leaders of 14 fact-checking organizations. Participants can choose between two cohorts: one in English and one in Spanish.

Fact-checking professionals face a specific set of challenges around mental health, such as time-tight timelines, online harassment, vicarious trauma and strong work demands. Because of this, we believe that having the right tools and strategies to protect one’s mental health and better support their team’, is more important than ever.

This program is offered free of charge, made possible by a generous grant from the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), and aims to empower fact-checking leaders with the skills to cultivate a lasting culture of mental health awareness and action within their teams. In addition, leaders will receive individualised coaching and accompaniment in implementing change.

Toward the end of the program, participants will also receive a series of guides with recommendations and best practices in both languages to serve as an ongoing resource for their work and for the wider fact-checking community.

What participants will learn:

Through five group training sessions and 1:1 coaching, participants will learn key skills in the following areas:

The basics of mental health and burnout prevention;
Addressing vicarious trauma and online harassment in the newsroom;
Creating a culture of psychological safety in the team;
Developing digital boundaries in an always-on culture
Sustaining a mental health toolkit and practices in your organization.

Participants can also expect:

Practical skills and actionable frameworks designed for fact-checkers
Coaches and trainers with media industry experience
Group discussions for mutual learning and support
Pairing with a coach for 1:1 support during the program
Written resources and guides for implementing change

Trainings will occur online in two-hour sessions on March 5, April 2, June 4, September 3, and October 1. The expected time commitment is 15-20 hours over 6 months.

How to apply

Participants are encouraged to apply to the program here, consisting of a brief questionnaire. Eligible applicants need not have experience with mental health in the workplace. Participants will be selected based on the following criteria:

Working at an organization that is a verified signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network
In a leadership or managerial role (i.e., responsible for a team or organization)
Openness to learning and growth around the topic of mental health
Capacity and commitment to implementing mental health in the workplace

Applications are due by February 8 at 23:59 PT. Applicants can expect to hear back within 2-3 weeks of submission.

Do you have doubts about whether this program is right for you? Sign up for the informative session in English, where we will provide you with all the details and address your questions. The informational session will take place on Tuesday, January 30th, at 6:00h PT / 9:00h ET / 15:00h CET. To register, click here

For more information or to book a call with our team, please contact training@newselfinvestigation.belenweb.com.

The team leading this program

AX (Ana Xiao) Mina – Program Manager

Besides being managing this program, AX Mina is part-time Program Director at The Self-Investigation. She is also a strategic consultant and leadership coach who’s supported news leaders and managers through programs with LION Publishers, The OpEd Project and the American Press Institute. She was a founding board member of the News Product Alliance and is a Senior Civic Media Fellow at the USC Annenberg School for Journalism and Communications. She is a certified trauma-informed yoga teacher and lifelong mindfulness practitioner. LinkedIn

Emma Thomasson – Training Manager (English)

Emma supports journalists and newsroom leaders to thrive in their professional and personal lives. She is an advocate for better workplace mental health and women’s leadership. She has coached senior leaders at Reuters in Europe, Asia and Latin America.

She worked for Reuters as a correspondent and bureau chief in Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, South Africa and the UK and ran a peer network at Reuters to support colleagues suffering from stress and trauma. She also set up a global mentoring programme to promote diversity.

She currently works as a leadership coach, trainer and consultant. LinkedIn

Natalia Martín Cantero – Training Manager (Spanish)

Natalia Martín Cantero is a journalist and university lecturer based in Brussels (Belgium). She has written extensively about mental health and wellness in Spanish-speaking media worldwide, including El País, Univision Noticias, and Agencia EFE, where she worked as a United States correspondent for seven years. Her book, ‘Think Well and You Will Get It Right: Compassion, Mindfulness, and Other Refuges for Maintaining Hope in Today’s World,’ was published in January 2024 by Plataforma Editorial. She is a Stanford Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT) instructor and a certified mindfulness and yoga instructor. LinkedIn

Kim Brice – Coaching Director

Kim co-founded The Self-Investigation. As Coaching Director, she supports the team of coaches to serve TSI’s clients in the best way possible and to professionalize and align around TSI’s core values.

As a coach, Kim supports journalists and changemakers to lead with greater resilience, purpose and personal excellence. She has coached journalists and support staff from dozens of media organizations around the world, including The Guardian, Volant Media, Zeit Online and through the European Journalism Center, the International Center for Journalists, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and the World Association of Newspaper Publishers.

She has over two decades of experience working as an activist, then founder and organizational advisor to many media, journalism and social justice support programs around the world. LinkedIn

About The Self-Investigation

The Self-Investigation is a global nonprofit catalysing a healthy work culture in the media and communication industries by placing well-being and mental health as a core business strategy and value. Our vision is driven by our belief that to sustain quality journalism, we need mentally healthy journalists.

With consultancies, training, coaching and other awareness-raising support, we have reached over 10,000 journalists and 30 media organizations with our work since 2020. We empower individuals and partner with media companies to operationalize well-being and mental health into work routines, policies & guidelines.

The post Open Call for Applications: Mental Health Leadership for Fact-Checkers first appeared on The Self-Investigation.