As CNN's Beijing correspondent, John Vause has covered some of the biggest stories in China and beyond, most notably the Sichuan Earthquake where he was one of the few international journalists in the quake zone reporting live, riots in Tibet and the build up and controversy surrounding the Beijing Olympics.
He also reported from Karachi and Islamabad when former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated and from Thailand during the uprising of Buddhist Monks in Myanmar. In January 2007 his exclusive reporting from Jakarta debunked a rumor that U.S. Democrat Presidential candidate Barak Obama attended a fundamentalist Madrassah as a boy.
Prior to Beijing Vause was based in Jerusalem, reporting from the frontlines on Israel’s war with Hezbollah, which earned a prestigious Edward R Murrow award; the Israeli pullout from Gaza; the death of Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat; the election of the Hamas government in the Palestinian Territories; and the violence and turmoil which followed. In 2005 his special report ‘Interview with a Suicide Bomber’ was a finalist in the New York Festival.
Vause has also extensively covered the war in Iraq. He was the only international television reporter to visit the destroyed safe house of al Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, where Zarqawi was killed by a US airstrike just hours earlier.
Before moving to Jerusalem, Vause was based at CNN’s global headquarters in Atlanta, where he anchored for both CNN/U.S. and CNN International. He was one of three anchors for CNN International’s Iraq war coverage from Kuwait in 2003. He subsequently reported extensively across Iraq, from Basra in the south to Kut in the east, traveling the country for almost three months as a unilateral reporter.
He joined the network in December 2000 as a U.S.-based correspondent, reporting from New York on the September 11 attacks in 2001. From there he traveled to Pakistan and on to Afghanistan for the fall of the Taliban. He also reported on the Cincinnati race riots, the violent demonstrations at the Summit of the Americas in Canada and the first inauguration of President George W. Bush. Vause made frequent trips to the Middle East, reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict including Operation Defensive Shield, when Israeli forces re-occupied the West Bank and the siege at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. His coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2003 earned him the Atlanta Press Club’s Journalist of the Year award.
Before joining CNN, he was the Los Angeles correspondent and then bureau chief for Channel 7 (Australia). In that time he covered all major U.S. news, politics, sports and entertainment stories, including the impeachment of President Clinton, the massacre at Columbine high school, the death of John F. Kennedy Jr., the Academy Awards and both the Democratic and Republican conventions.
Vause’s career began in 1989 as a TV sports reporter in his hometown of Townsville, Australia. He was later named senior correspondent for both Channel 7 and Channel 9 and spent a year as a correspondent for TVNZ, based in Auckland.
Vause holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in American history from the University of Queensland.
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