IWPR, the reporting charity, has been providing training for journalists in conflict areas for ten years and established the first project in the former Yugoslavia during the war. IWPR now operate projects in five areas including Afghanistan and the Caucasus. Each training programme is different, developed in response to the needs of the journalists in different regions.
Duncan Furey, operations manager for IWPR, has been setting up the project in Baghdad for six weeks and is waiting for final funding confirmation from a UK government agency.
In the mean time, he is still searching for an experienced freelance reporter to lead the training team. IWPR are keen to find a journalist with good spoken Arabic and, rather ominously, will also pay for hostile environment training.
"The focus is on practical training, not a classroom. We might, for example, take reporters out to produce a story on the lack of electricity in their town - and then publish the work on our web site," he said.
The IWPR site publishes work in 13 languages and demonstrates the important role that IWPR plays in providing a portal for under-represented regional news.
"We re-syndicate work internationally to organisations including the BBC. Information provision is a by-product of our training, but it is vital on a humanitarian level. These are quality stories generated by local journalists, and that is really important in countries where journalists are under pressure to create news to please the newspaper owner.
"Our news in Afghanistan is re-syndicated to between 12 and 17 Afghan publications in three different Afghan languages."
In Iraq, the state of the national media is highly complicated with 150 news publications in Baghdad alone. The priority for the IWPR project will be to get accurate information to local people.
"IWPR will work with local journalists to produce quality journalism written by Iraqis in their own languages," said Mr Furey.
"We'll provide basic skills across the board."
IWPR, which won two awards at this year's NetMedia online journalism awards, aim to run the project for one year initially. The centre will provide basic office equipment and satellite phones with an email facility so that work can be published on the IWPR site.
The media industry in Iraq is still 'very murky' according to Mr Furey, and for most Iraqis, it will be some time before the internet provides a more open platform for publishing.
"The web is democratic - but in Western terms. The internet is useless to a Baghdad journalist with five children struggling on $30 a week," he said.
"The only people in Baghdad with money and access to that kind of equipment are the elite - and you have ask where they got that money.
"You might not like the answer."
See also:
http://www.iwpr.net
http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/story674.html
http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/story138.html
For more information on the training job vacancy, contact Andrew Stroehlein at The Institute for War and Peace Reporting on 020 7713 7130 or email andrew@iwpr.net.
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