Hayton began his broadcasting career as a pirate radio DJ on Radio 270, joining BBC Leeds in 1968. In 1974, he became a reporter for BBC News, covering a wide range of domestic and international news stories. He had a distinguished 37-year career at the BBC, reporting from Tehran, Iran as the 1979 Revolution took place, becoming a BBC correspondent in Washington D.C. and Southern Africa (based in Johannesburg), the latter of which involved reporting on the war in Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe), from 1980–83. He also reported from Eritrea during the war with Ethiopia and from Beirut during the civil war in the 1980s, narrowly escaping injury when the car he had been travelling in was blown up by a land mine shortly after he had got out.