Revenge is a dish best served cold, or so journalist Goce Mihajloski showed us today. About a year ago, he was forced to leave the Nova TV station, as her owner Sead Kocan faced judicial pressures coming from the now disgraced Special Prosecutor’s Office.
Nova was considered supportive of the conservative VMRO-DPMNE party, and the charges aimed at its owner, and the bigger, older, more vocal Sitel TV, were seen part of Zoran Zaev’s campaign to silence the critical media outlets after his take-over of the Government in 2017.
In the atmosphere of political witch-hunts started since the break of the 2015 political crisis, there was not much love for the Nova journalists, even among fellow journalists, some of whom competed to score points with the new Government by denouncing their colleagues. Mihajlovski, who joined Nova from the pro-Zaev TV24, was especially targeted, and received a nasty message from veteran journalist and left-wing activist Borjan Jovanovski.
Goce, let’s not kid ourselves… as part of TV Nova, unfortunately you are part of a criminal enterprise against the journalist profession.. You are a good kid with talent but unfortunately talent is just a small share of our profession.. The rest is Character. Cheers, Borjan Jovanovski kicked Goce Mihajlovski, while the young journalist was down.
A year passed, and in the meantime Borjan Jovanovski picked up a job with the newly founded 1TV station, whose owner Bojan Jovanovski – Boki 13 (no relation) was reportedly handing out excellent pay packages and perks to his on-air talent, and quickly drew a large number of well known SDSM supporters from other media outlets. The rest of the Jovanovski journalist family also did well under the Zaev regime – his sister Svetlana Jovanovska is the new press officer in the Macedonian Embassy in Brussels, while her daughter, his niece, was hired by the Macedonian Information Agency as Brussels correspondent. Borjan Jovanovski also reportedly collected 85.000 EUR from the Film Fund. In short, life was good.
Until Monday, that is, when Boki 13 was arrested while attempting to flee to Greece, on charges that he was involved in a major extortion racket allegedly led by Special Prosecutor Katica Janeva. The money he was handing to 1TV journalists? Likely came from extorting businessmen such as Jordan Orce Kamcev, on the promise that Katica Janeva will drop her charges against him. Boki 13 was given a month detention, pending trial, and earlier on Friday it was reported that the tax authorities have blocked 1TV’s account.
So, Goce Mihajloski went to his Facebook account and wrote:
“Borjan, let’s not kid ourselves… as part of 1TV, unfortunately you are part of a criminal enterprise against the journalist profession.. You are a good kid with talent but unfortunately talent is just a small share of our profession.. The rest is Character. Cheers”, Mihajloski wrote, adding hashtags such as “karma is a b….” for good measure.
It’s not that Borjan Jovanovski was bending over backwards to protect his employer in his hour of need. He was quick to denounce Katica Janeva as “dumb” and hasn’t come out in defense of Boki 13. In fact, most of the well paid 1TV journalists quickly excused themselves from the fight, saying that their contracts have expired or they will not be renewing them.
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