The Network of the Iraqi Investigative Journalism (NIRIJ) is the first network of investigative journalism in Iraq, founded on 9th of May, 2011 by a number of professional investigative journalists and has been working since then on providing financial, editorial and advisory support for the investigative Iraqi journalists to perform detailed investigative reports based on searching for documented facts and supported by variety of sources who are strongly related to the investigating topic.
The main mission of NIRIJ, in addition to performing detailed investigative reports, is improving the skills of the Iraqi investigative journalists and working on spreading the investigating culture in the Iraqi journalism, to be a regulatory device which diagnose the faults and follow financial and administrative corruption cases, indicate deviations and mistakes in the official and the civil behavior and the violations committed against the different society segments in Iraq.
In this context, NIRIJ works on helping the investigative Iraqi journalists to choose detailed investigative reports that deal with financial and administrative corruption, the community violations against women, children and the weak segments in a society like Iraq which witnesses a crucial transformation, in addition to working on completing the suppositions related to the investigative journalists’ reports and funding the reports such as costs of translating documents, transportation, accommodation, laboratory tests, advices, printing, communications and all other requirements of a detailed investigative report.
Furthermore; NIRIJ directly supervises the investigative report in all its stages, helps in completing the report’s structure, reviewing the report for several times down to the last detail of editing and publishing the report in the Iraqi and Arabic media channels, in addition to translating it into Kurdish and English.
Meanwhile; NIRIJ works, through its annual and biannual plans, to provide training chances inside or outside Iraq for the Iraqi investigative journalists and preparing a number of the distinguished journalists to join NIRIJ in the future as supervisors or trainers.
NIRIJ has always worked on establishing a professional investigative culture in all aspects of journalism in Iraq ; it looks forward to establishing a unique investigative type to be a tool for detecting the hidden and disclosing facts that may cause in a positive change in the Iraqi society.
- NIRIJ presents a number of services to complete detailed reports that depend on a professional methodology and are based on disclosing facts to the public, the services include:-
- 1. Costs of transportation, accommodation and other necessary costs for meeting sources or visiting sites for field investigation.
- 2. Costs of obtaining documents and access to Iraqi, Arabic and universal databases.
- 3. Costs of the investigative reports’ supervisors.
- 4. Costs of a legal expert to evaluate the investigative report statutorily and making sure that it is free from any statutory violation before it is published in different media channels.
- 5. Providing statutory support for the journalist in the case of any legal accountability after publishing the report.
- 6. Translating the report into both Kurdish and English languages and vice versa.
- 7. Working on publishing the report in Iraqi, Arabic and universal media channels in addition to NIRIJ website.
- 8. Helping the investigative journalists to present their reports to Iraqi, Arabic and universal competitions.
- 9. Furthermore; NIRIJ grants the investigative journalist a publishing bonus of 500$ to 750$ after two weeks of publishing the report.