He joined Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in 2019 as a Václav Havel Fellow and continued at the company for five years as a multimedia journalist. During that time, he frequently reported from the front lines of Georgia’s pro-democracy, anti-government, and anti-Russian protests—often under tear gas, pepper spray, and water cannon fire—documenting police brutality and state repression.

His 2023 video about Ukrainian schoolchildren forcibly taken to Russia from occupied Mykolaiv and their escape to Georgia was a finalist for the EU Prize for Journalism. His 2021 documentary on anti-LGBTQ+ riots in Tbilisi, during which he was physically attacked by a far-right mob, won Best Human Rights Video Report award.

Since 2022, Tornike has worked as a freelance local producer for Sky News (UK). He contributed to coverage of the Russian influx into Georgia after Putin’s mobilization order, providing real-time translation and reporting support. He also pitched and helped produce Sky’s early coverage of Georgia’s controversial “foreign agents law,” bringing international attention to the crackdown on pro-democracy protests. He later assisted in investigation into UK cars exported to Russia via Georgia despite sanctions, and the Georgian government’s violent dispersal of protestors after freezing EU integration talks.

As a contributor to German newspaper taz, Tornike has reported on Georgia’s democratic backsliding, its anti-Russian protest movement, and the government’s adoption of Kremlin-style anti-LGBTQ+ policies.

In 2024, Tornike got to work as a local producer for Emmy-winning journalist and YouTube creator Johnny Harris. This collaboration was greatly meaningful, as Johnny’s visual storytelling had been inspiring since his early days at Vox.

As part of his 2024 IJP Fellowship at Germany’s leading newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, he published a feature on Georgia’s queer diaspora in Berlin, highlighting the growing hostility and repression they face at home.

For Eurasianet, he has reported on Russian-occupied regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, including open-source coverage of a planned Russian naval base in Abkhazia and its implications for Georgia's Middle Corridor aspirations, and South Ossetians fighting Russia's war in Ukraine in the early days of invasion.

Tornike also participated in the U.S. State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) in 2023, traveling across the country to explore American civil society, political diversity, and racial justice movements—from slavery’s legacy in Alabama to the George Floyd protests in Minneapolis.