BBC minimising a bad news story

Back in the early 1980s 364 economists wrote an open letter to The Times decrying Margaret Thatcher's economic policies, this was a massive news story and I seem to remember the BBC news ran with it as their main lead for days. Today 20 economics experts wrote to The Sunday Times saying that the government must act more quickly to cut Britain's huge budget deficit and that the lack of a credible plan threatens to push up interest rates and undermine the recovery. A big story on its own but since one of the signatories is the Labour Lord Desai, surely a political embarrassment. However by mid-afternoon today the story was the last piece on the BBC 5Live news and on the website it appears as a minor link from the front page under Business News with the deliberately dull headline "Economists push for deficit cut".

Maybe there is an innocent explanation for the discrepancy in coverage but I'll be damned if I can think what it might be.