Jean-Philippe Ceppi was born on December 11, 1962, in Lausanne, Switzerland. He holds a degree in Arts (history, philosophy, and journalism) from the University of Fribourg and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Geneva International University. He holds a PHD in Contemporary History from the University of Lausanne, with a thesis on the history of hidden cameras in television.
Since 1987, he has pursued a career as an investigative journalist and foreign correspondent in print media and radio, traveling back and forth between Europe and Africa. Between 1989 and 1997, he was a correspondent in southern Africa for Radio France Internationale, then in Nairobi and Johannesburg for Libération, the BBC, Swiss Radio, and Le Nouveau Quotidien. He received the Jean Dumur Award in 1995 for his coverage of the genocide in Rwanda. In 1998, he headed the new investigative department of the daily newspaper Le Temps and became editor-in-chief of Dimanche.ch, a weekly publication of the Ringier group.
He joined Télévision Suisse in December 2001 as a journalist for Temps Présent, the Swiss public television network's flagship magazine program. Several of his reports have received international awards. Since 2004, Jean-Philippe Ceppi has been the producer of Temps Présent where he is the editor-in-chief and presents the program every Thursday evening. In 2024, after 20 years at the helm of the program, he stepped down to return to the field as a reporter. He is also the ethics advisor for RTS.
Ceppi also founded Swissinvestigation.ch, a collective of investigative journalists in French-speaking Switzerland, which merged in 2016 with Investigativ.ch, two organizations active within the Global Investigative Journalism Network. He headed the organizing committee and chaired the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Geneva in 2010.
Since 2009, Jean-Philippe Ceppi's work in Rwanda has been honored by the United States Holocaust Museum and Memorial. He has been called several times as a witness in legal proceedings against alleged perpetrators of genocide in Switzerland, France, and Germany.
Jean-Philippe Ceppi also teaches at the Academy of Journalism at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Since 2013, he has been giving a clinical teaching workshop to Master's students entitled “Techniques of Investigative Journalism.”