About KirkukNow

KirkukNow

KirkukNow is an independent electronic news website launched in April 2011, covering Iraq's disputed territories from Kirkuk. It publishes the same reporting in Arabic, Kurdish and Turkmen as well as English, with the stated aim of promoting coexistence among the area's ethnic and religious communities and providing easy access to information. In a part of Iraq where communities have often read different news in different languages, KirkukNow's founding idea was simple and demanding: give every community the same information, in its own language, from a newsroom that belongs to no party and no single group.

The disputed territories, as defined in the Iraqi constitution, include areas in Kirkuk, Nineveh, Diyala and Salah al-Din governorates that are contested between the Iraqi federal government and the Kurdistan Regional Government. They are home to Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen, Chaldean Assyrians and other communities, and to Sunni, Shia, Christian and other religious groups. KirkukNow describes itself as the only independent media outlet that covers developments throughout those territories in the three main languages of the areas plus English. That specialisation — one territory, four languages, one editorial standard — defines everything the outlet does.

Launch in April 2011 and editorial mission

KirkukNow's own about page records that www.kirkuknow.com was launched in April 2011 as an online news agency. The timing matters. Iraq was still shaped by the aftermath of the 2003 invasion, the withdrawal of United States forces was approaching, and the status of Kirkuk and the other disputed areas remained one of the country's most sensitive unresolved questions. A news outlet devoted entirely to those areas, and committed by design to publishing for all of their communities at once, was a deliberate intervention in a fragmented information environment.

The outlet states its vision as becoming the leading media outlet in the disputed territories of Iraq, and its mission as informing and engaging the communities of those territories. Its published objectives are explicit. It seeks to establish a media model void of any political, ideological, religious, sectarian, ethnic or racist agenda; to ensure freedom of access to information and to analyse events from a professional point of view; to promote peaceful coexistence among its audience through its media message; to observe transparency and consolidate media professionalism and ethical conduct; and to expand media coverage in the disputed territories. Few Iraqi outlets state their founding bargain with readers so completely, and KirkukNow returns to those objectives in its strategy documents and award citations.

Four languages, one newsroom

Multilingual publishing is KirkukNow's most distinctive feature. As its editor-in-chief Salam Omer has explained, the outlet's main goal is to provide the local community with the same information regardless of ethnicity: everything is translated into Arabic, Kurdish and Turkmen, and published in English for readers abroad who follow news from the region. That workflow is labour-intensive. A story reported in one community must be rendered accurately in the languages of the others, without softening or sharpening its meaning for any audience.

The purpose is practical as well as principled. Partners and researchers who have studied the outlet note that most people in the disputed territories have historically read news — often biased and incomplete versions of it — only in their native language, through outlets aligned with their own community or party. A single source publishing identical reporting across languages creates a shared factual ground on which dialogue becomes possible. The European Endowment for Democracy, one of the outlet's partners, describes this multilingual approach as the means by which KirkukNow builds dialogue between communities within the disputed territories, in an area where media access is particularly difficult and the local media landscape is highly fragmented.

The territory it covers

KirkukNow's beat is defined by geography and constitution rather than by a conventional news agenda. It covers stories and events taking place within, or relevant to, Iraq's disputed territories. In practice that means sustained reporting from Kirkuk and from parts of Nineveh, Diyala and Salah al-Din, on subjects including local government and provincial councils, budgets, security, displacement and return, education, health, the environment, women's issues, and the rights of ethnic and religious minorities. Since 2017, according to profiles of the outlet, its coverage has encompassed developments across all of the disputed territories as defined by the Iraqi constitution.

The history of that territory gives the reporting its weight. The region's minorities suffered decades of forced Arabisation under Baath Party rule. After Saddam Hussein was ousted in 2003, sporadic clashes continued, and in 2014 the Islamic State occupied parts of the region, committing countless human rights abuses, most infamously the genocide of the Yezidis. Control of areas remains contested between Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government. KirkukNow's correspondents report from inside that complexity, for readers who live with its consequences daily, rather than treating the disputed territories as an occasional story for outsiders.

People and leadership

KirkukNow's editor-in-chief is Salam Omer, who is also chairman of the board of the People's Development Organization. Profiles of Omer record more than fifteen years of experience in journalism, beginning with Kurdsat TV, followed by work with local and foreign newspapers and as a media trainer with the Independent Media Centre in Kurdistan. He holds an MBA in Leadership from the American University of Iraq and a bachelor's degree in English Language and Literature from the University of Sulaimani, and has undertaken training in pedagogy for adult and civic education in Sweden and in peace and dialogue in Norway. That combination — newsroom experience, management training and peace-work training — mirrors the outlet's own double identity as both a news organisation and a coexistence project.

Omer has spoken candidly about the difficulty of the outlet's early years: it was hard to find competent journalists in touch with the different communities, and people from all sides accused the newsroom of bias in favour of one ethnic group or another. That recollection is instructive. For an outlet whose credibility depends on being trusted by communities that distrust one another, accusations from every side are almost an occupational condition, and the answer has to be procedural: the same story, the same facts, in every language, every time.

Projects, training and community work

KirkukNow's work extends beyond daily news into projects that use journalism as a tool for accountability and community development. It has, for example, carried a project to monitor provincial budgets in four Iraqi provinces — Kirkuk, Nineveh, Diyala and Salah al-Din — following the formation of local governments, attending budget sessions of provincial councils, interviewing council members, officials and citizens, and producing press reports and academic documents on how budgets are approved and disbursed. The stated purpose was to educate citizens and inform them about the work of the provincial councils, encouraging transparency and creating dialogue between citizens, officials, civil society and the media.

The outlet has also run environmental reporting programmes for women journalists. Its coverage records a six-month programme, supported and funded by the German Federal Foreign Office and implemented by KirkukNow, in which eighteen female journalists took part under a framework combining constructive journalism, environmental reporting and amplifying the role of female journalists. A member of that network, Saja Ismail, won first prize in a journalism competition among two hundred participants for a report, published by KirkukNow, on waste sorting and management initiatives in Aqra, Bardarash and Shekhan. Such programmes show how a small, specialised outlet multiplies its effect: by training journalists in underserved beats and communities, not only by publishing its own stories.

Recognition and awards

KirkukNow's own strategic reporting records a consistent pattern of recognition. It received the Most Progressive Media Outlet award in 2019-2020, in a competition organised by Internews for Iraqi media outlets that had paid attention to covering women's and gender issues — an award its later reporting dates to 2020. It states that it has won at least six local awards for its coverage of human rights and freedom of expression. In individual years, its correspondents' stories and follow-ups won prizes in human rights journalism competitions in 2017, 2018 and 2019, and its reporters won first to third prizes in the same human rights competition across 2017 and 2019 to 2022. A KirkukNow story also received an award in a December 2023 journalism competition in Kalar organised by Radio Deng with support from the National Endowment for Democracy.

Just as significant is republication. The outlet records that in recent years its stories have been published by dozens of local institutions across Iraq, including the Kurdistan Region. For a small newsroom, that syndication effect is evidence that its reporting is treated as a reliable common source by outlets that might not share one another's politics — exactly the function it was founded to perform.

Partners and support

KirkukNow openly thanks the partners it has worked with since its establishment. Its published list includes Wadi, the Association for Crisis Assistance and Development Cooperation; Free Press Unlimited; Minority Rights Group; Hivos; Internews; the European Endowment for Democracy; the Ceasefire Centre for Civilian Rights; and DW Akademie. Analysts of the Kurdistan Region's media, including the Middle East Institute, likewise note that KirkukNow is supported in part by the European Endowment for Democracy and Free Press Unlimited. This grant-supported model is characteristic of independent media in the region, where, as analysts observe, independent outlets lack the deep-pocketed patrons available to party-affiliated counterparts and must secure funding from international democracy and media-development organisations instead.

The outlet has also acted in solidarity with other journalists. It was among the media outlets and publishing institutions that jointly called for the immediate revocation of jail sentences against five journalists and activists in the Kurdistan Region, in a statement coordinated with press-freedom organisations including the Metro Center in Sulaymaniyah. Its reporting regularly covers press-freedom questions itself, including how courts apply press law and penal code provisions to journalists.

Strategy and the next stage

KirkukNow has publicly described restructuring its strategic plan for a coming three-year period, on the grounds that most of its previous strategies had been accomplished and that a new stage brings different needs. Its stated ambitions for that stage include becoming the best local institution for producing professional and genuine journalistic pieces, and the best media institution for covering the issues of marginalised communities. The framing is notable: success is measured not in raw audience size but in professional quality and in service to the communities least served by other media.

That strategy responds to a hard environment. The disputed territories remain politically unresolved, media access remains difficult, and journalists across Iraq work under legal and physical pressure. An outlet that has operated continuously since 2011 in that environment, while maintaining a four-language publishing model, has already demonstrated unusual institutional durability. Its strategic language suggests it intends to deepen, rather than broaden, its founding specialisation.

Why KirkukNow matters

KirkukNow matters because it addresses one of Iraq's deepest information problems directly. In territories where identity, land and political status are contested, segregated information feeds segregated politics. By publishing the same independent reporting in Arabic, Kurdish, Turkmen and English, KirkukNow gives Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen, Assyrians and others a common set of facts about the places they share. Its budget-monitoring, environmental and training work extends that mission from informing communities to equipping them.

For readers outside Iraq, the English edition offers something rare: sustained, locally reported coverage of Kirkuk and the disputed territories, areas that appear in international news mainly during crises. KirkukNow covers them between crises, in detail, and in the voices of the people who live there. That continuity is the outlet's contribution to the record of modern Iraq.

At a glance

KirkukNow is an independent electronic news website launched in April 2011 and based in Kirkuk, Iraq. It covers Iraq's disputed territories — in Kirkuk, Nineveh, Diyala and Salah al-Din — in Arabic, Kurdish, Turkmen and English, under editor-in-chief Salam Omer. Its stated vision is to lead media coverage of the disputed territories, and its mission is to inform and engage their communities while promoting peaceful coexistence. It is supported by international media-development partners including the European Endowment for Democracy and Free Press Unlimited, and has received multiple awards for its human rights, women's and gender coverage.