In times like these, newspaper editors keep being asked: can't you find some good news for the front page? The questioners are, understandably, depressed by what they read. Even editors may feel less than elated when picking another 'bad news' story as the front-page lead.
The answer, unfortunately for those seeking a media lift for their spirits, is that we report what is going on. If the market drops or a health scare hits our hospitals, that is not our doing - but it is our job to tell people about it. Apart from undermining what an independent media is all about, glossing over bad news does nobody much good in the end. External reality catches up with boosterism in all but the most closed of societies and that can make things even more painful in the end.
Now, however, comes a candle in the darkness, a story which tells us, 'Optimism, not Confucius, is what makes Asia stand out.' It summarises a survey carried out for The Economist by the Canadian-based Angus Reid Organisation, which asked people if they expected to be better off after one and 10 years, and if they thought their children would be better off than they were.
Five of the top eight countries in the resulting 'Hope Index' were East Asian - topped by Malaysia with a score of 66 per cent. Kuala Lumpur has, of course, steered its own course in the crisis. But going to the International Monetary Fund does not seem to have brought down South Korea and Thailand, which ranked fourth and sixth with 62 per cent and 60 per cent respectively. China was seventh and Taiwan eighth.
So is the pessimism being overdone? Are the prophets who see Japan setting off an even more widespread crash being alarmist? Are all those huge bank provisions unnecessary? And in the booming United States (fourth equal in the poll), will consumer spending buoy the economy which holds the key to most of our futures? In short, do the people know better than the experts - not to mention the journalists? Well, one poll does not make a recovery, and, in world terms, the countries with the second and third biggest economies - Japan and Germany - were among the least optimistic. (France, the fourth biggest economy, was next to last, but the poll was taken before Gallic spirits were bucked by the World Cup victory.) What the poll does suggest is that however great their immediate problems, many Asians have been sufficiently encouraged by their progress over the past decade to believe that the medium-term future does not have to be gloomy. Against the background of the spectacular growth before the crisis, they still see their continent on a long-term upward path, whereas many Europeans are affected by the long grind of recession, unemployment and restructuring since the 1980s.
If that is, indeed, the case, Asia's great need is for politicians who can capitalise on the latent feeling that there must be light at the end of the tunnel. Leaders who have tried to gloss over the scale of current problems have lost credibility, blown adrift by events. Instead, people have to be taken through the inevitable pain of the present while being offered a more hopeful future that makes it all worthwhile.