Journalists at a military and foreign policy news website are considering legal action against the Ministry of Defence after its press office appeared to have “blacklisted” them.

Declassified UK said the move amounted to censorship of an independent news website that takes a critical eye of UK foreign policy.

Editor Mark Curtis, who co-founded Declassified with Matt Kennard last year, told Press Gazette: “We are looking at taking legal action against the MoD because we think they have certainly acted against the Civil Service Code, for example, and there may be other codes of conduct or other legal requirements that they might not be consistent with by telling us that.”