Selective attention

On that screenshot of the main headlines on the BBC News website, you'll notice that the anniversary of the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri merits a place among the top stories (in the BBC's eyes). 

The anniversary has also resulted in a long BBC magazine article. 

And the anniversary was also marked by this morning's Sunday programme on Radio 4, where William Crawley talked to Tommie Pierson, a State Representative (for the Democrats). 

That magazine article and that interview on Sunday show again that the BBC has a strong interest in some stories but not others - and stories about white U.S. cops killing African-Americans fall very much in the former category. 

And it also shows that the BBC prefers to talk to people who want to talk up the race problem in the U.S. rather than those who don't. (Sunday has always gone straight to such people).


Update: And as my former B-BBC colleague DB pointedly says (on Twitter):

Well, yes. It's strange how such 'complicating' people get in the way of a nice, simple left-leaning fable.