Yesterday’s debate of CIVIL named “Pluralism and political crisis”, was attended by leaders of 11 parties and political initiatives that did not participate in the negotiations for implementation of the Przino Treaty. BESA, The Movement for Reform of DPA, DOM, United for Macedonia, NDM, PDP, PCER, Uniteti, Levica, Bosniaks party that is still in forming…
If you add up their votes from the last election cycle or the potential they show on their meetings, you will get a number that could easily reach 200,000 votes, if not more.
But what they had to say you could not see on most national televisions (excluding TV24 and TV21 News) nor the public broadcaster MRT. Despite repeated calls to the media and the fact that the event was announced publicly, repeatedly and heavily promoted through social networks.
With this behavior, by ignoring the views of political parties and their members and the hundreds of thousands of citizens that vote for them – that also pay for the existence of the public service, MRT has once again shown that it is far from achieving its role as articulator of the interests and views of all citizens and public information platform that offers political pluralism. Rather than that, MRT has been converted in the last few years into TV Bastille, and continues to be blind to the public interest.
We would’ve understood if the meeting was on issues that are not current, academic … But the leaders of these 11 parties expressed their views on the current political crisis and the existence of conditions for free elections. Right in the moments when these issues are in the heat of the interest of fellow citizens of Macedonia. By ignoring such events, MRT, and other media, show that they are moving further away from journalism and closer to the basic propaganda.
For the private national television stations that choose not to report such events or those who come to cover the event, then do not publish anything, we can only express regret because they waste their resources. If they need a full picture of the events of CIVIL, they can feel free to ask for materials from the organization, which has a great team of multimedia production. It is sad to harass and drag the journalists and cameramen around town, if their efforts remain unpublished in someone’s computer or shelf, or if they serve a different type of information processing, which has nothing to do with journalism.
