Janis Laizans is a broadcast journalist with over ten years of experience as a cameraman, picture editor and reporter for national and international media.
He currently works as a video journalist covering Estonia for the international news agency Thomson Reuters. In addition he regularly films and edits news features for the BBC, France24 and the Chinese news agency Xinhua.
Janis started his career in 1998 as a news reporter at Latvian Independent Television. After four years of reporting on politics in Latvia, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ukraine, and the UK, he received the Journalistic Association of Latvia Award as Best New TV Journalist 2001.
In 2001 he moved to Latvia’s largest national commercial radio station SWH, where he worked in the newsroom as a reporter and producer.
In 2002 he established his own TV production company, BBN. He is the author, creator and producer of the acclaimed prime-time television series, Criminal Cases of Latvia, broadcast nationally on TV3. Janis has also directed several documentary films, including Once Upon A Time in the EU and Re:loud. He has produced and directed a fly on the wall documentary about a year in the life of a small seaside town in Scotland. Other projects include a documentary series on the growing craze of British stag weekends across Central and Eastern Europe.
In 2003, Janis joined the local radio station, Jubilee FM, in Edinburgh, Scotland. He has helped develop the station over the past five years and now become as one of the board members of the station. In 2006 Janis has received UK national media award “Andrews Cross Award” for best community radio programme, as a producer.
In 2006 he joined the television project Weekend In Europe, initially as a cameraman travelling and making films all around Europe, and then later as senior producer in the head office in Riga.
Since then, Janis has worked as a cameraman, picture editor and producer for various international TV channels including the BBC, France24, Euronews, France2, France3, ARTE and ARD/ZDF.
Janis Laizans is Member of Latvian Journalists Union.
