The Time.mk news aggregator is helping the efforts of the Zaev Government to perpetuate a distorted version of the meeting between VMRO-DPMNE President Hristijan Mickoski and Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov. Borisov had his Facebook live stream running during the first several minutes of his meeting with Mickoski, and pressed on the issue of the “friendship treaty”, demanding that Mickoski commits to uphold it and cutting the feed as soon as Mickoski gave a broad expression of support.
Mickoski gave a statement today repeating what he told Borisov and the position of VMRO-DPMNE, that the party will support only the elements of the treaty that are not harmful to Macedonian interests. SDSM affiliated media outlets and the Time aggregator were ignoring Mickoski’s statement, while pushing reports favorable to SDSM.
In one example, an older report from Deutsche Welle, whose Macedonian commentators are openly biased in favor of SDSM, was kept up in the Time feed, while Mickoski’s more recent statement was pushed to the bottom. Pro-SDSM commentators, meanwhile, pushed stories titled with “Mickoski is speaking Bulgarian” and “Mickoski unclear whether he supports the treaty with Bulgaria”.
The treaties with Bulgaria and especially the one with Greece are greatly damaging SDSM standing with voters ahead of the elections scheduled for April 2020, and a major part of the Government’s PR campaign is to try and make the opposition, which rejected the concessions Zaev made, as equally guilty.
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