Last week we discovered that Jeremy Hunt had entered into confidential meetings with Rupert Murdoch over the future of Murdoch’s BSkyB bid.

In November 38 Degrees handed in 60,000 messages to Ofcom asking them to get the bid in front of the Competition Commission. At Christmas an Emergency Petition was put forward pointing out that Jeremy Hunt would not make an impartial judge. On New Year’s Eve Hunt got Ofcom’s report and has been sitting on it ever since.

Murdoch in meetings with Hunt

It has now emerged that Hunt has been having meetings with Murdoch’s people. He could be trying to find ways to make a deal with Murdoch’s advisers.

Now it’s our turn to get involved. Together we can get in touch with our MPs and ask them to put pressure on Hunt to ensure the report goes public and into the hands of the Competition Commission. But we don’t have long.

This is a fast moving campaign that needs quick responses. We’ve already had success in standing up to Rupert Murdoch’s BSkyB power grab and now we need to do it again. To take action click here:
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/hunts-secret-meetings

Here’s Robert Peston’s blog outlining more of the details: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2011/01/ofcom_says_news_corps_sky_bid.html

David hands in the petition

On New Years Eve we handed in the first batch of signatures for our emergency petition demanding Murdoch’s BSkyB takeover is sent to the Competition Commission for a wide-ranging and impartial investigation. We launched this petition after Vince Cable got stripped of responsibility for the deal, and Jeremy Hunt took charge instead.

We teamed up with global campaigning organisation Avaaz, and between us we had over 70,000 signatures on the petition — a great response, especially considering it was Christmas.

There’s already been some media coverage, and we can expect more to follow as officials and politicians get back to work in the coming days.

Tens of thousands of 38 Degrees members emailed their MPs after the Conservative Minister, Jeremy Hunt, launched an attack on the BBC by announcing plans to cut the licence fee in 2012.

Update: To make it easier to find your MP we’ve moved the spreadsheet to this page: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/content/BBC-under-threat/

On Friday, Jeremy Hunt announced that he plans to cut the BBC’s licence fee. This new attack comes just a few days we won the campaign we fought together to save 6Music.

The new Culture Minister is keen to make a start on weakning the BBC, however. This weekend, he said he was thinking about plans to cut the license fee. The new government are dipping their toes in the water, to see what sort of reaction they get. They’re under pressure to start weakening the BBC from all sides: media billionaires like Rupert Murdoch can’t wait to see the end of proper public broadcasting in the UK.

Today, there’s been a massive, people-powered response to the Culture Minister’s comments. Thousands of us have already written to our MPs, asking them to contact Jeremy Hunt and stop him going ahead with the plans – click  here to join in. If you’re on Twitter, you can follow #proudoftheBBC trending right now.

With 6 Music, we’ve proved once that when we work together we can defend the BBC from its enemies. Now we need to come together again to make sure this new threat to the BBC doesn’t go ahead.