This paper explores news journalists' practice at Iraqiya, the Iraqi state broadcaster, in the context of the sustained conflict in Iraq. The article uses 18 months of fieldwork at the channel’s Baghdad headquarters and interviews with media practitioners throughout the news department. This paper displays how Iraqiya news employees redefine media professionalism and ethics in the context of an ongoing conflict. It is asserted that Iraqiya’s news practitioners live in a liminal state that appeared from their lived experience of the ongoing conflict, a conflict that has produced novel journalistic identities and modes of practice as violence and war have become normalized in everyday practices and lives.