As a reporter, he became a successful journalist, first in Georgia, where he reported on the conflict in Abkhazia and then in Ukraine. He served for the Kiev-based radio station Kontynent, on which he had his own show " First round with Heorhiy Gongadze".
His strongly independent line soon attracted hostility from the increasingly authoritarian government of Leonid Kuchma; during the presidential election, his commentaries prompted a call from Kuchma's headquarters to say "that he had been blacklisted to be dealt with after the election." Touring New York along with other Ukrainian journalists, he warned of "the strangulation of the freedom of speech and information in our state."
Moving to his personal life, he was previously married to Mariana Stetsko. Then, he married to Myroslava Petryshyn, a journalist, and political activist. They have twin daughters named Nana Gongadze and Solomiya Gongadze.
He disappeared after failing to return home, and two months later his body was found in a forest in the Taraschanskyi Raion (district) of the Kiev Oblast (province), outside Kiev. The body had been decapitated and doused in dioxine, apparently to make identification more difficult; forensic investigations found that the dioxine bath and decapitation had occurred while the victim was still alive.
He was buried in the Mykola Naberezhny Church in Kiev and had remained unburied until then, as Lesya Gongadze, the journalist's mother, has refused to have the body interred until Gongadze's head had been found.