Oinounou was raised in the Chicago suburbs. He is a graduate of George Washington University where he received a BA in Political Communication and an MA in Security Policy Studies. He served as editor in chief of the school's biweekly newspaper, The GW Hatchet. He began his media career as a producer at Fox News Channel, initially for Fox News Sunday and later as the network's embedded producer traveling with the 2008 McCain presidential campaign. He later worked as an international editor at Bloomberg TV where he covered the great recession and the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.