Peter Laufer

Laufer is an award-winning journalist and writer.  Laufer spent several years as an NBC News Correspondent attached to their Washington bureau.  At NBC News his primary roles were to attend to breaking news coverage worldwide and to create long-form documentaries.  He covered the civil wars in Central America, and immigration and drug trafficking in Mexico, earthquakes, revolutions, and natural disasters worldwide.  Mr. Laufer's early work on AIDS was cited by the American Academy of Family Physicians and received the Edward R. Murrow Award from the B'nai B'rth.  He was awarded the George Polk Award from Long Island University for his documentary on Americans imprisoned overseas, "Nightmare Abroad", which was also cited by the New York State and American Bar Associations, and which he expanded into a book by the same title published in 1993 by Mercury House in San Francisco.  His documentary work on immigration, drug trafficking, and illiteracy was recognized by further Murrow and National Headliner Awards.  Among Laufer's other books are works published by the University of Nevada Press and the National Geographic Society.  The critical "Inside Talk Radio: America's Voice or Just Hot Air?" (Birch Lane, 1995), received research support from a Goldsmith Grant from the Joan Shorenstein Barone Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University.  Laufer received a Robert Bosch Foundation fellowship in Germany for the academic year prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, an event he covered for CBS News and reported on in his personal memoir of the times, "Iron Curtain Rising" (Mercury House, 1991). 

Among Laufer's current projects is a longterm study of Mexican media for the NGO Internews, funded by the Packard Foundation, which has taken him throughout Mexico conducting primary research.  The research from his documentary film, Exodus to Berlin, is now available in his book of the same name (Ivan R. Dee, 2003), cited by WNBC-TV critic Jeffrey Lyons as "powerful and compassionate, a little-known story that has to be told."

Prior to Laufer's work at NBC, Laufer performed as a talk radio host at KGO in San Francisco and KABC in Los Angeles, and was news and program director at WRC in Washington.  His consultancy work includes talk radio clients in Washington, Berlin, Amsterdam, and London.  He has written for the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, among other newspapers.  His magazine credits include Mother Jones, Europe, and Penthouse.

Laufer did his undergraduate work at the University of California at Berkeley and earned his Masters in Communications from American University in Washington.