- 100th solder killed in Afghanistan this year (2 mins 10 secs)
- Cuts in public sector spending, and how to quantify spending cuts (4 mins 55 secs)
- Reactions to 'supertax' on bankers' bonuses (2 mins 28 secs)
- Opening of Copenhagen climate change conference (3 mins 35 secs).
In fact, the above was the order in which they appeared.
Was Copenhagen too low down? Roger Harrabin's report referred to the meeting as "the most important in human history". The previous items didn't have anything comparable to trumpet their significance.
Arguably, for something to count as news, importance is not enough: it also needs to be unexpected. Whatever the claims for Copenhagen on the former, it scored very low on the latter. The fact that the summit had opened was, in that sense, about as far from being news as you can get.
The clue to the value attached to the story of the 100th soldier killed in Afghanistan lay in the very first words of the programme: "Within the last few minutes, the Ministry of Defence has announced ..."
BBC Radio 4's former newsroom Editor, Tim Bailey, shows how he puts together an edition of the Six O'Clock news in this CoJo film.
