Dealing with the Media Monitoring UnitIn its attempts to present itself in a more respectable image, the British National Party has established the Media Monitoring Unit to monitor how the press reports its activities. Members from around the country are encouraged to scan papers, news reports and radio shows for any reporting of the BNP and other race issues. When reporting is negative, the MMU swings into action, firing off letters of protest, phoning up the journalists involved and threatening to take newspapers to the Press Complaints Commission and TV stations to the Broadcasting Standards Commission. In this way, the Media Monitoring Unit tries to bully, intimidate and harass journalists and news editors, especially in the local press, into dropping negative reporting of the BNP. Members are encouraged to write in and complain, while the MMU dispatches its own letters of disapproval. On other occasions, the MMU instructs supporters to talk part in radio discussions and flood online polls. Mr and Mrs Angry from Nowehere might not quite be who they claim. In 1998 the BNP forced a retraction from a radio station in Scotland for describing the party as fascist, while HTV was threatened with being taken to the BSC over claims that the BNP was linked to football hooligans.. In March 2001, the BNP reacted furiously when the Mirror reported that the BNP had held a rally in a Conservative Club in Oldham. The paper was inundated with dozens of phone calls and emails from angry members of the public complaining about the BNP being described as "neo-Nazis", "race-hate extremists" and "criminals". In an obvious attempt to intimidate and bully the journalist, they sought to extract an apology and retraction from the paper. The convicted bomber and violent thug, Tony Lecomber, the number two in the BNP, even had the audacity to write to the Mirror complaining about being called a nazi. The paper courageously stood firm against this onslaught. Whom you might encounter from the BNP & MMU
What to do if the BNP gives you a callContact Searchlight Information Services immediately and we will provide background detail on every aspect of BNP policy, its racism and criminality, and profiles of its leadership. |