Johan Depoortere is a former VRT journalist.
In 1970, he began working for the BRT news and was featured as a foreign reporter and journalist.
The first armed conflict he followed on the ground as a reporter was the Lebanese Civil War in 1976. During the 1980s he was a correspondent in Latin America, where he covered the revolution in Nicaragua, civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala, among others. In 1989 he covered the Romanian Revolution, and from 1995 to 1999 he was a foreign correspondent for VRT in Russia. In 2001, he reported on the war in Afghanistan. Finally, in 2005, he became a foreign reporter in the United States until early 2009.
Even after his retirement, he remains active as an occasional contributor to various outlets.