What the Macedonian phone-tapping scandal tells us about clientelism in the media

We focus on the method of rule of the last Macedonian government led by the rightwing VMRO-DPMNE with respect to (TV) media-political clientelism. An ongoing phone-tapping scandal has made overt what past research has only suggested was taking place – that the new ‘phase’ of the patron-broker-client relationships in the country has suppressed rational legal authority to the extent that it has shaken the very core of state institutions’ legitimacy. Since 2006, a reordered media-political clientelism gradually enabled the emergence of a propagandistic media setting, which in turn facilitated a lack of public resistance to party’s colonization of the state and enabled its move towards an authoritarian fashion of rule. We claim here that in the regime’s manner of rule, the journalists and media professionals played the role of both victims and collaborators.