INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTRE KURDISTAN

The Independent Media Centre will bring experienced European journalists to Kurdistan, who want to share their knowledge with their Kurdish colleagues. Teaching will be done mostly in workshops, and part of the trainings will take place at the training hall of the Media Centre in Sulaymaniya. On the job training course will of course mainly take place at the media premises The Independent Media Centre in Kurdistan is working with a combination of Dutch (and international) and Kurdish trainers. These are the bridge between the European trainer and the Kurdish journalists. This way the Media Centre in the future will have formed its own supply of Kurdish trainers, who will also train new trainers. The centre will be working in co ordinance with Kurdish institutes on education of journalists.

Civil journalism is putting people central in reporting. What are the results of (new) policy for the people, for Sosan and Serdar? How do people feel about changes? 4000 kids who have a heart problem is bigger news than strife inside one of the parties. Kids playing in dirty water and getting ill, as well. So are the problems of Asians coming to do the dirty work in Kurdistan, and the consequences for Kurdish labor. Civil journalism puts people first, and politics at their service. It makes media more interesting for their consumers, because they find stories about their own lives. This amounts to papers being sold and read better, radio being listened to more frequently and TV being watched with more interest.

The Independent Media Centre in Kurdistan was founded in May 2008 and is supported by the Dutch ngo’s Press Now and Democracy and Media. Funding is both Dutch, international and Kurdish. Its main office is in Sulaymaniya, but the centre also has offices in Duhok and Irbil. Press Now started training civil journalism in Iraqi Kurdistan in 2004, and has since trained a few hundred journalists from different media (radio, TV, print). The Media Centre will extend the work started by Press Now, giving equal time and energy to journalists from different backgrounds - political, social, religious and ethnic.