Miles Kington: Here is the low-calorie, high-fibre news

'If a person had a trolley containing 50 tins of cat's meat, you'd think he was crackers. Same with news'

I mentioned yesterday an old Radio 4 news summary that I had come across on a tape, which incorporated the following vital items:

The attempted coup by George Speight in Fiji;
A disarmament meeting between presidents Clinton and Putin;
British troops being held hostage in Sierra Leone;
A hospital scandal about the disposal of baby organs;
A statement by the Home Secretary Jack Straw about immigration;
Some flooding in the North.

It all seems very dated now, because Straw has moved on and Sierra Leone is out of the news and the thing in Fiji is yesterday's coup, but there is one way in which the news bulletin has not dated at all, and that is the way in which it has the right mix of items. It has the mix that we have become used to. It has been put together by someone who knows how to mix'n'match news items and to make an appealing little mixed salad out of them. Bit of foreign, bit of home, bit of war, bit of Brits-in-danger abroad and a bit of hospital life-and-death shock.

Putting a news bulletin together is a bit like assembling a supermarket trolley of groceries. If you saw a person with a trolley containing all light bulbs or 50 tins of cat's meat, you'd think he was a bit crackers. Same with news bulletins. If you saw or heard five minutes of news on which all the items were about hospital scandals, you'd wonder what had gone wrong. It isn't possible that the top five news items of the day should all be about hospital mismanagement, is it? Or about the Middle East? Or about drugs, or New Labour cock-ups?

Well, yes it is. It is perfectly possible that, in one day, five scandals should break in five different hospitals. It is perfectly possible that they should all be more newsworthy than the next most newsworthy item in the news. What is not possible is that the media should give them equal importance, because with five hospital scandals you don't get the mix. It's always good to have a Brits-in-danger abroad, for instance, whether being kidnapped in Sierra Leone as then, or held in Greece for plane-spotting as now. But what other ingredients will a canny news editor put in his supermarket trolley? Well, the following are always good bets:

A case involving a child victim, known only by his (or her) first name;
A weather disaster;
A train or motorway crash;
Some footling rumour about either Myra Hindley or the Bulger killers or Harold Shipman;
A possible medical breakthrough, preferably in a kind of disease from which someone famous suffers or has recently died;
The death of someone who hasn't been famous for a long time but was famous when the media people in charge were all young (witness George Harrison's extraordinary coverage);
An imminent trial verdict;
A British sporting success;
A horrible fire, with people dead.

Any of these is good. Separately, at least. What our news managers don't really like is an event that combines several of these. If there was a terrible motorway pile-up caused by a freak crash of a plane in the fast lane, and in one of the cars a Scottish scientist died who had recently isolated a baldness gene and was now eloping with Liz Hurley, they'd tear their hair out wondering how to deal with it. Separate events, fine. All together, terrible. I think the Munich air disaster still makes people feel uncomfortable because it combined big football news and big air-crash news in one story, which feels all wrong.

Here is another selection of things that are thought to be good in the mix:

A looming defeat for the Government in the Lords;
Someone about to start an attempt to go round the world in a balloon;
Sportsmen in a bit of after-hours how's your father;
British sports fans bringing shame to us abroad;
Big company in feet-of-clay-collapse shock horror (eg British Airways, Marks & Spencer, Enron etc).

See how it works? Don't believe me? Check it out next time you listen to a news summary. Bit of this, bit of that, give it a bit of a stir, serve it up.

Better still, don't listen at all. You can easily imagine the news. Saves time. I never see the TV news and never listen on radio. Except on old tapes. Catch up eventually. Blissful.