John F. Burns

John Fisher Burns (born 4 October 1944) is a British journalist, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes. He was the London bureau chief for The New York Times, where he covered international issues until March 2015. Burns also frequently appears on PBS. He has been called "the dean of American foreign correspondents." On 26 March 2015, The New York Times announced that an article about the burial of Richard III would conclude Burns' career at the New York Times.

Born in Nottingham, England, his family emigrated to Canada when he was young where he later studied at McGill University. Between 1980 and 1981, he studied Russian at Harvard, and in 1984 he studied Chinese at Cambridge University. From 1998 to 1999, he was a visiting fellow at King's College, Cambridge, studying Islamic history and culture. He also speaks French and German. His father was a South African who served in the Royal Air Force.

In the early 1970s, Burns wrote for the Canadian Globe and Mail, as a local and later parliamentary reporter. He was sent to China in 1971 to be among one of few Western journalists in China during the Cultural Revolution, after a confusion that led to his brief ban from the precincts of the Canadian Parliament by the Commons Speaker. Burns joined The New York Times in 1975, reporting, at first, for the paper's metropolitan section, and has written ever since for the newspaper in various capacities.

He has been assigned to and headed several of the Times foreign bureaus. He and fellow Times journalists John Darnton and Michael T. Kaufman won the 1978 George Polk Award for foreign reporting for coverage of Africa. Burns was the Times bureau chief in Moscow from 1981-84. In 1986, while chief of the Times Beijing bureau, Burns was incarcerated on suspicion of espionage by the Chinese government. Charges were dropped after an investigation, but Burns was subsequently expelled from the country.

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