Fredric Dannen is an American journalist and author. He is best known for his landmark book Hit Men: Powerbrokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business (1990), which investigated the behind-the-scenes dealings of the major American record labels in the 1970s and 1980s, focussing on the careers of leading CBS Records executives Walter Yetnikoff and Dick Asher.

More recently, Dannen was the co-author (with Barry Long) of Hong Kong Babylon: An Insider's Guide to the Hollywood of the East, in which Dannen examines the connections between the Hong Kong film industry and Asian organised crime.

Dannen was a contributing editor of Vanity Fair and in 1986 he was co-recipient of the Overseas Press Club's Morton Frank Award for business reporting from abroad. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, Channels, Barron's and Rolling Stone.