Online Journalism News

Members list still available but journalists and bloggers fear breaking BNP injunction

Journalists and bloggers viewed and downloaded the British National Party (BNP) membership list last night, but very few disclosed significant details, wary of the party leadership's injunction on the confidential material.

Bloggers were also reluctant to publish the link, which was still active as the story - one of the biggest UK online leaks to date - was broken on the Lancaster Unity site.

Until late last night, a list of 13,500 named BNP members, was widely available on the web via a Blogspot.com blog, now removed by Google.

The story was widely covered as the main breaking story on all UK national newspaper websites, as BNP members expressed concern at losing their jobs or being 'outed' to their neighbours and colleagues.

The list, which gave details of names, telephone numbers, postal and email addresses of members, was leaked despite an injunction granted by the High Court in April this year against publication of the material.

Despite the removal of the original blog, many have collected the data and blog postings, such as the one at Liberal Conspiracy, suggest it has been circulated by email.

Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP, said in a statement on the party's website that the list was not comprehensive or up-to-date and included people who had not been members of the party.

The BBC blurred the list in its news bulletins today, but showed that it had been downloaded.

Public exposure advantage
Griffin claimed on the BNP site that the additional publicity would be beneficial rather than detrimental to the party.

It was, Griffin claimed, released to coincide with the case of BNP member Adam Walker, who this week faced dismissal from his teaching job as a result of investigations into his use of a school laptop during lesson time.

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