Mark David Danner (born November 10, 1958) is a prominent American journalist. He is a former staff writer for The New Yorker and frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. Danner specializes in U.S. foreign affairs and has written extensively on Haiti, Central America, the former Yugoslavia, and the Middle East.
Danner was born at Utica, New York. He studied modern literatures and aesthetics at Harvard. After graduating in 1981, he joined the staff of The New York Review of Books.
In 1984, Danner joined Harper's Magazine as senior editor. In 1986, he joined The New York Times Magazine, where he stayed for four years.
In 1990, Danner joined the staff of The New Yorker shortly after the magazine published his three-part series on Haiti, "A Reporter At Large: Beyond the Mountains".
On December 6, 1993, for only the second time in its history, The New Yorker devoted its entire issue to one article, Danner's piece, "The Truth of El Mozote", an investigation into the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador, thought to be the worst atrocity in modern Latin American history. The Mozote article became the basis for Danner's first book, The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War, which was published in 1994.
Danner is also the author of The Road to Illegitimacy: One Reporter's Travels through the 2000 Florida Recount (2003) and Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror (2004) as well as forthcoming books on Haiti and the Balkans.
In 1999, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.
Danner co-wrote and helped produce two hour-long television documentaries for ABC News' Peter Jennings Reporting series: While America Watched: The Bosnian Tragedy and House on Fire: America's Haitian Crisis, which both aired in 1994. As commentator, Danner has appeared on The Charlie Rose Show and The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour on PBS, CNN's Prime News, ABC's World News Now, and C-Span's Morning Show.
Danner is Professor of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley and Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights at Bard College.
