Missing child in bulletins because she�s �cute and white�, claims Orange prize winner

THE disappearance of Madeleine McCann is part of a wave of overblown television news stories that would sit better as a blockbuster novel, prize-winning author Lionel Shriver has claimed.

The killings at Dunblane and the reaction to the death of Diana, the Princess of Wales, fall into the same category, she says.

The American-born writer will make this argument at the Edinburgh International Television Festival next Sunday, despite the fact that Gerry McCann will pay tribute on Saturday, at the same event, to the power of television news in aiding the search for his daughter.

While Shriver had not been aware that McCann was also speaking at the festival, the author said she would not be uncomfortable putting her views to him.

"For that one kid to have got that much attention just because she's really cute and white and blonde was disproportionate," she said.

"I would not mean my criticism of the coverage to be unsympathetic, but my sympathy extends to any parent who's been in that situation. His heart should go out to them too. I don't think that's insulting," she said.

She intends to argue that the McCann search, the death of Princess Diana, and the trials of Michael Jackson and OJ Simpson all take up valuable space that could be devoted to more important issues. It is a trend that originated in America, particularly from cable news networks with gaping spaces to fill, but she believed British news is fast catching on. "These stories conform to or can be made to conform to the requirements of commercial fiction and are given undue attention for that reason," she said. "They have all the ingredients of a good thriller."

Having won the Orange fiction prize in 2005 for We Need To Talk About Kevin, which depicted a teenage high-school killer and was markedly similar to the subsequent Virginia Tech massacre, she added that the latter incident - and even the Dunblane killings - could fall into the same category. She describes them as examples of hyper-narrative, receiving widespread TV coverage because of their clash between good and evil, their drama and a narrative curve that moves neatly from beginning to middle to ending.

She said that Princess Diana's death had to be shoehorned into this format because of its lack of villains, lack of complexity, and, in her view at least, an undramatic death. The Iraq war, in contrast, would make a poor novel because it is dragging on without an ending.

"Though I am a fiction writer, I am very keen on keeping a hard line between fabrication and the truth," said Shriver, who lives in London, and whose latest novel, The Post-Birthday World, was published earlier this year.

She rejected the argument put forward by many news editors that they are simply giving the public what they want, claiming that audiences adapt to the level of complexity that is presented to them.

"I could do the same thing with books. I could say I am writing real rubbish because that's what people expect and buy. But my experience in writing novels is that there is a huge hunger for novels that are morally sophisticated and hugely complex. I have been impressed by the quality of the readership," she said. While she added that she did not believe there was any conspiracy by news editors to shelter the public from more important truths, this was nevertheless the consequence of their scheduling decisions.

She said: "It ends up being inadvertently Orwellian. There is only so much time on television and, when you take up programming disproportionately with things that don't really matter, there's not any space left for the things that do matter."

She was not very forthcoming with the things she had in mind, however. When pressed she cited a recent Newsnight report on cocaine smuggling from Colombia to the UK as being very good, and mentioned the high levels of UK immigration.

"News editors need to have an ongoing sense of responsibility and real creativity rather than falling prey to laziness. And they must not underestimate the audience either," she said.

Lionel Shriver will be speaking at the Edinburgh International Television Festival on Sunday August 26.

l EITF coverage: pages 74&75