Iraq

The Republic of Iraq enters the State Media Monitor’s 2026 cycle with a single outlet in the main SMM dataset: the Iraqi Media Network (IMN), classified State-Controlled (SC) and reviewed in detail in the Iraqi Media Network 2026 profile. No outlet is classified Independent Public (IP), Independent State-Managed (ISM), Independent State-Funded (ISF), Independent State-Funded and State-Managed (ISFM), Captured Public (CaPu) or Captured Private (CaPr) at the close of the 2025/26 cycle. The single-outlet cluster reflects both the institutional architecture of the post-2003 Iraqi state-media settlement, which consolidated all federal state-affiliated media within IMN, and the SMM 2025/26 review’s assessment that no other Iraqi outlet currently meets the documentation threshold for inclusion in the main database.

Constitutional and institutional framework

The Iraqi state-media architecture rests on the 2015 Law on IMN, which placed the Iraqi Media Network under the supervision of the Council of Representatives, granted it legal personality, and included formal public-service and editorial-independence language. The governance structure established by the law comprises a Board of Trustees, in principle nominated by the Council of Ministers and approved by the Council of Representatives, with the IMN President appointed by the Board from among eligible Iraqi candidates. IMN is the legal successor to the Iraqi Radio and Television Corporation, which had served as the Ba’ath-era state propaganda apparatus before 2003.

The cluster’s single governance pathway therefore runs from the Council of Representatives through the Board of Trustees to the IMN President, with the Council of Ministers exercising the nomination function in principle and, in the February 2024 appointments, exercising direct designation in practice. The 2024 appointment process was criticised by parliamentary figures and reinforced concerns that IMN’s Board does not operate as an arm’s-length safeguard. No effective statutory editorial firewall, no independent governing board exercising arm’s-length authority over editorial production, and no audited financial-disclosure mechanism operates at IMN.

Government and political context

Iraq is a federal parliamentary republic with a Council of Representatives (parliament), an indirectly elected President serving as head of state, and a Prime Minister serving as head of government. The 2025/26 cycle saw a substantial political reset across all three institutions.

Parliamentary elections were held on 11 November 2025. The election and subsequent coalition negotiations left the Coordination Framework, a coalition of Shia parties with substantial pro-Iran components, as the dominant parliamentary force. The post-election government-formation process was prolonged by competing claims to the premiership, with outgoing Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani and former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki both initially nominated before withdrawing their candidacies in April 2026. The Coordination Framework subsequently nominated Ali al-Zaidi, a businessman without prior political experience, as a compromise candidate.

Nizar Amedi of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan was elected President by the Council of Representatives on 11 April 2026, succeeding Abdul Latif Rashid, and on 14 May 2026 parliament approved Ali al-Zaidi’s government programme and part of his cabinet, marking the start of the al-Zaidi government, although several ministerial posts remained unresolved. The Coordination Framework retained its parliamentary majority through the transition.

Cluster events during the 2025/26 cycle

The cycle produced two institutional developments relevant to IMN’s analytical position. First, the prolonged government-formation period from November 2025 to May 2026 produced a sustained editorial test for IMN, whose editorial output across the election, government-formation process and presidential and prime-ministerial transitions was assessed by Iraqi media observers as aligned with dominant parliamentary forces, particularly the Coordination Framework. The institutional governance structure of IMN, including the Board composition appointed in February 2024 and the Karim Hammadi presidency, remained intact across the transitions.

Second, IMN marked the 70th anniversary of the founding of Iraqi Television on 2 May 1956, with President Amedi receiving an IMN delegation at the Baghdad Palace later in April 2026 and a series of official observances in May 2026. Iraqi Television is widely described as the first television service in the Arab world and among the earliest in the Middle East, and the anniversary functioned both as a public-service legitimisation moment for IMN and as a marker of the network’s continuity through multiple regime transitions across seven decades.

Funding ecosystem

IMN does not publish audited financial statements that would permit external scrutiny of its funding sources or operating budget. SMM-retained expert sources, drawing on prior cycle interviews with Iraqi media observers, indicate that at least 80 per cent of IMN’s operating budget is derived from government subsidies; this funding-share characterisation should be treated as an SMM-retained expert estimate rather than a published official budget line. The Washington Institute reported IMN’s annual budget at approximately US$75 million in 2024 (up from approximately US$70 million in 2019), and a workforce of approximately 3,500 staff supporting branches in each Iraqi province and bureaux in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Iran, Egypt and Australia. These figures should be treated as reported third-party estimates rather than audited IMN disclosures.

Iraq operated under a three-year federal budget law for 2023 to 2025, although annual budget tables and execution remained politically contested. The 2026 budget process remained uncertain during the government-formation period following the November 2025 parliamentary election, and the SMM 2025/26 review did not identify a published IMN-specific allocation for 2025 or 2026. The wider Iraqi fiscal environment, including oil-price volatility and the protracted government-formation process, remains a source of subsidy risk for IMN.

Editorial environment

The 2015 Law on IMN mandates editorial independence in principle, but in practice IMN’s editorial output is closely aligned with the dominant political forces in the Council of Representatives at any given moment, and the Board of Trustees has not functioned as an arm’s-length safeguard for editorial production. Iraqi journalists working for IMN affiliates have reported losing positions or facing administrative consequences for publicly criticising the Iraqi government or Coordination Framework politicians, including in non-IMN editorial roles, and Iraqi press-freedom monitors describe a chilling effect on editorial output across the network. No independent statutory regulator or arm’s-length oversight body monitors IMN’s compliance with the 2015 law’s editorial-independence mandate.

In its 2026 World Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders ranked Iraq 162nd of 180 countries with a score of 28.85, a fall of seven places from 2025. RSF and Iraqi monitors link Iraq’s poor ranking to insecurity, political pressure, militia intimidation, legal pressure and impunity for attacks on journalists. The Committee to Protect Journalists, Freedom House and other international media-monitoring organisations have continued to describe Iraqi journalists as exposed to threats, intimidation and violence, with Baghdad identified as the principal site of press violations.

AI and digital policy

IMN has not published a public-facing institutional AI policy. Iraq has no public-sector generative-AI framework specific to IMN, and national digital-policy work has focused more on telecommunications, platform regulation and infrastructure than on newsroom AI governance.

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