KNN

Description

KNN (Kurdish News Network) was founded in 2008 as a subsidiary of the Wusha Corporation, an independent Kurdish media group, and first started broadcasting on the 31st of December 2008. KNN is primarily a Kurdish-language channel, its main remit is local and international current-affairs, but KNN also reports extensively on the economy, politics, sport, culture and the arts. News updates are supplemented by in-depth interviews with prominent Kurdish politicians and thinkers, and KNN also produces a vide variety of documentaries and local-interest programmes, as well as adapting foreign programming for Kurdish viewers. The channel is headquartered in Sulemaniah, Iraqi Kurdistan, and employs over 160 people there and in its offices across the region. KNN has a network of correspondents throughout Kurdistan and Iraq, as well as permanent local offices in Irbil (Hawler) and Kirkuk. KNN is unique in Kurdistan in that it is the only news channel not under the direct control of one of the major political parties in the region, and as such is the only televised media outlet which can be considered fully independent and truly objective in the selection of its material and its reporting. One of the major results of the domination of media by organizations run by the governing parties in Kurdistan has been that only the news related to government activity is that considered to show it and its policies in a positive light. KNN, on the other hand, seeks to give a more complete picture of