The decision of Telma TV to cancel an already planned interview with opposition leader Hristijan Mickoski is a low point for a TV station that until recently insisted on its independence.

It is made jarring by the fact that it was Telma which performed a public stunt during the Colored Revolution in 2015: its anchors would put a large red phone on the desk while reading the news and every now and then it would ring with “orders from the Government”. The anchor would then theatrically refuse the pretend officials of the then ruling VMRO-DPMNE party and insist that the TV station will report fairly. Months later the TV station acknowledged that the stunt was an idea put together by a PR agency that often cooperates with the SDSM party.

During the Colored Revolution Telma would also hapilly report on the unverified (and later largely debunked) wiretaps which the SDSM party published of conversations of VMRO officials. The TV station owners – the large gas station company Makpetrol – demanded political protection against a take-over attempt through the Macedonian stock exchange citing precisely the need to maintain Telma’s editorial policy at a time when most other TV stations refused to go along with Zoran Zaev’s Colored Revolution. Supporters of the now disgraced Special Prosecutor’s Office were permanent features on Telma’s late night debate shows funded by USAID.

But recently the TV station adopted a policy of trying to have opposition officials (now from VMRO, after SDSM grabbed power in 2017) only if it involves a harsh grililng. And most recently, a planned interview with VMRO-DPMNE President Hristijan Mickoski was fully cancelled.

This development coincided with a settlement signed between Makpetrol and the Zaev regime to pay off the company with 32 million EUR in exchange for the share Makpetrol helds in the only gas pipeline link Macedonia has to Bulgaria. Makpetrol was in a dispute with the state ran GAMA company since 2005, with both sides insisting they should hold 51 percent of the pipeline. The case is now being settled with a huge financial windfall for Telma TV’s owners.