AMMAN (JT) – The Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) network announced on Thursday that it expanded its media training activities to include journalists from Palestine, Yemen and Bahrain. The Amman-based network this week conducted training for 25 reporters and coaches from the three countries, from which other journalists will join their peers from Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt in a training of trainers course in the capital next month. ARIJ Executive Director Rana Sabbagh said the network has developed a UNESCO-funded manual to guide Arab investigative journalists on career techniques, including ways to set criteria for an investigative project, formulate a hypothesis, read into open and closed sources, organise information and tell the story to the readers. “The manual… uses a methodology that marries the best Western practices to local media and societal specificities in a region where access to information is only legally guaranteed in Jordan,” Sabbagh, a journalist and columnist, told The Jordan Times yesterday. She added that Amman will host the network’s second conference for Arab investigative reporters in November. ARIJ’s first conference last year, also held in the capital, featured Arab and international reporters and journalism professors who presented their experience in investigative journalism. Relying mostly on funds from the Copenhagen-based International Media Support, the network was founded in late 2005, with its regional office in Amman, to “support editors and journalists who are keen to investigate societal issues of public interest”. Since then, ARIJ has trained more than 235 Arab journalists and 40 trainers, in addition to offering support and supervision to more than 62 investigative reports in the Arab world, according to a network’s statement, a copy of which was sent to The Jordan Times.