After graduating from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1994, Fackler started his career as a journalist at Bloomberg News in 1996, working in Tokyo where he covered financial markets.

[3][4] The following year, he reported on a racketeering scandal involving corporate extortionists in Japan known as Sōkaiya who took millions of dollars from major brokerages and Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank.

He led a team that was named as finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for its articles into the Fukushima nuclear disaster and the Japanese government's refusal to disclose data on the spread of radiation to evacuees.

[9] The prize committee called their articles a "powerful exploration of serious mistakes concealed by authorities in Japan after a tsunami and earthquake devastated the nation, and caused a nuclear disaster.

[11][12] Fackler has also written for magazines such as Foreign Policy[13] and the Columbia Journalism Review about Japanese media issues, including a failed effort at investigative reporting at the daily Asahi Shimbun.

[14] He has also published academic papers about journalism in Japan, including the national newspapers' and NHK's close adherence to the government's official narrative during the Fukushima disaster even when the journalists themselves clearly had doubts, a phenomenon that he calls "media capture.