[Review: Charles Garrett started a war against half a million VMRO-DPMNE voters]

These days we saw how after the publication of the “bombs of Zaev”, two, perhaps crucial, but unknown facts (published in a daily newspaper) for the average reader to understand the crisis in the country, got caught up in the didactic style of the authors, who, instead of illuminating the news – as a classic journalistic reflex – immediately tried to argue over these new developments, butchering the form and genre, and even being indecent when addressing a diplomat from a high ranking country.
Link to the original article: Чарлс Гарет отвори војна со половина милион гласачи на ВМРО ДПМНЕ

Date and time of publication: 31.03.2015, 19:17

Review date: 02.03.2015

Reviewer: Љубомир Костовски

“The possibility of setting up an interim government should be part of the negotiations between the two parties,” said British Ambassador to Macedonia Charles Garrett. “It’s not up to me, as ambassador of Great Britain, he said, to say what the solution to this crisis is, yet clearly that particular approach is much talked about and should be raised in the course of the negotiations. Finding a solution would take a great deal of creativity, patience, hard work, a lot of compromises from both sides and of course sincerity”, Mr. Garrett added.

It looks as if someone doesn’t like the comments of the British ambassador about the events in the country, and two things seem to be causing a fierce reaction. The first is the acceptance of the idea for an interim (technical government) in the country and second is the placement of the eavesdropping issue at the forefront of the whole situation, along with the notion that the facts and information presented with those conversations are something that this government must face after all.

The text is not posted on a page with a comment section, but it does have comments itself, and its genre is not clear: it’s disclosing facts that the average reader was not aware of (the statement of the Ambassador, for example), ranking it as news, but immediately opposing the information optics, before the news is embedded in the consciousness of the reader, by inserting a free interpretation that the results from the parliamentary elections do not allow the formation of an interim or any other kind of government. As a special frame of the text or as text number two, but affixed to the reviewed one, one of the speeches of the Prime Minister is repeated once again – the speech where he doesn’t accept this suggestion of SDSM as a way out of the crisis. It is as if Gruevski’s speeches are some form of irrefutable statements published in the press; as if these statements cannot be disputed or denied.

But that’s not all – in the text, which is not clearly establishing its own genre, we have a new sensation, which, quite unprofessionally, is nowhere to be found in the announcement of the text (title, subtitle, prologue) and we should look for it, wrapped in a number of sentences and explanations, and conclude that the UK was the western country ordering the spying! And this sensation, in order to blunt the shock to the reader, is approached as a fact (!), as something that was already known, although this kind of news certainly requires a lot more facts and explanations?! In other words, it is as if the authors are saying “we didn’t discover anything and don’t need to justify ourselves, because this was already known!”

In fact, the biggest problem for the authors of the text, according to the “news-comment-news-comment” system, was how to avoid the “guilt” of the former US Ambassador Paul Wohlers, because it turns out that perhaps Garrett was not willing “to support Zaev” but was creating an alliance of views with his distinguished colleague from the diplomatic corps, who also said that the technical government is not such a bad idea!? The difference between the positions of the ambassadors is in the second part of the statement of Wohlers, as if the difference is so important or crucial for (not) accepting the suggestions coming from abroad for Gruevski’s government, so readers can then, due to these differences, get a good night’s sleep.

Of course, the title of the text is particularly contentious, as well as the header (“British Ambassador in trance!”). This ill-mannered title is unprecedented in our history of journalistic relations with foreign ambassadors (if we don’t take Milenko Nedelkovski into consideration), “opposing” the “defiant” representative of the international community in our country, by mentioning the alleged will of half a million voters, as some kind of a “casus belli”. Without, of course, realizing that the crisis also stems from those alleged results at the elections; revealed as a dirty operation with the published “bombs”.