Binder was a journalist for "The New York Times" from 1961 to 2004, reporting on topics regarding Eastern and Western Europe, the Soviet Union, the United States, Cuba, Puerto Rico. He served as a foreign correspondent in 1961 in Berlin, where he reported on the building of the Berlin wall. He was based in Belgrade from 1963 to 1966, in Bonn and later Berlin, Germany, from 1967 to 1973. During the latter period, he reported on the gradual rapprochement between East and West Germany, and on the Prague Spring of 1968. He then transferred to the Washington, D.C. bureau as a diplomatic correspondent, later serving as the bureau's assistant news editor, and again as a reporter.