Meet John Ware

John Ware joined the BBC as a reporter for Panorama in 1986, having previously worked in newspapers and on the ITV current affairs programme World In Action.

John Ware's programmes have won several prestigious awards

Several of his investigations for Panorama have uncovered major stories.

In 1989 he discovered the evidence that led the High Court to accuse the Tesco heiress Dame Shirley Porter of "gerrymandering" by attempting to rig the Westminster City Council's elections.

In the 1990s, in addition to his work on Panorama, John also presented Rough Justice, Taking Liberties and Inside Story. Several of the cases he covered were referred back to the Court of Appeal and some of the convictions were quashed.

On transport, in1997 he discovered papers belonging to the Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott showing that despite elections promises to the contrary, the new Labour government was considering privatisation of the London Underground within two months of taking office.

One of John's specialities has been the conflict in Northern Ireland which he has covered regularly since 1974.

His Panorama programme "Who Bombed Omagh?" in 2000 tracked down and confronted members of the Real IRA unit who had bombed Omagh town centre two years earlier. This led to a campaign sponsored by the Daily Mail that raised £1.2m from the public to fund a civil action by relatives of the victims against the people named in the programme.

Two years later in "A Licence To Murder", he revealed how military intelligence and the special branch had colluded with loyalist murder gangs to assassinate people they suspected belonged to the IRA.

Journalism awards

John was named Broadcast Journalist of the Year at the RTS Journalism Awards in 2001 for "Who Bombed Omagh?" and "Spin Doctors" (an investigation into the truthfulness of government claims about NHS spending and new initiatives).

He has won the Current Affairs Home Award three times and, in 2003, he won Amnesty International UK's award for the best factual documentary for two Panorama programmes that exposed collusion between the intelligence services and Loyalist murder gangs in Northern Ireland.

In 2004, in advance of Lord Hutton's report into the death of the government scientist Dr David Kelly, John Ware presented a 90 minute special.

In it he accused Greg Dyke, then Director General of the BBC, of having "bet the farm on a shaky foundation" by not properly investigating the claim made on the Today programme that 10 Downing Street had pressurised the intelligence services to "sex up" its now infamous dossier on Iraq.

In 2004, John Ware was awarded the prestigious James Cameron Award for "moral vision and professional integrity."