When the same awful thing happens often enough, it ceases to be newsworthy – and that is a big problem

‘Modern definitions of news and newsworthy tend to refer to them being about what is “interesting” to people, rather than what is “important”.’ Photograph: Zoonar/Alamy

For more than a week after Russia invaded Ukraine, there was almost nothing else in the news. It was all we talked about on the radio, which felt right. Then I was on holiday for a week and off with Covid for a further week.

When I was back presenting my programme on BBC Radio 5 live after this fortnight away, subjects other than Ukraine were in our running order. This was inevitable, I suppose, even though the situation in Ukraine was by then considerably more dire than it had been. Our coverage still dominated airtime, but, somehow, Ukraine could no longer have our undivided attention, because the story was no longer new. One atrocity followed another and steadily, appallingly, they lost the power to shock.