Carl Bernstein

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Carl Bernstein (left) and Bob Woodward (right).

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Carl Bernstein (February 14, 1944) is an American journalist who, as a reporter for The Washington Post along with Bob Woodward, broke the story of the Watergate break-in and consequently helped bring about the resignation of US president Richard Nixon. For his role in breaking the scandal, Bernstein received many awards; his work helped earn the Post a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1973.

Bernstein quit The Washington Post in 1976. He has worked as a senior correspondent for the ABC network, taught at New York University, and contributed to Time.

Bernstein authored two books with Woodward: All the President's Men, which details the successes and failures of their journalistic efforts against the backdrop of the unfolding scandal, and The Final Days, a recounting of the concluding months of the Nixon presidency. He co-authored the book His Holiness: John Paul II & the History of Our Time with Marco Politi. Following the May 2005 revelation of the identity of Deep Throat, Bernstein contributed to Woodward's book The Secret Man, which deals with Woodward's relationship with Mark Felt. In April 2006, Bernstein published an article in Vanity Fair magazine, where he is a contributing editor, calling for a Senate investigation into the presidency of George W. Bush. The article also mentions that he is currently working on a biography of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Bernstein graduated from Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland. He subsequently attended the University of Maryland, College Park. Bernstein, a lifetime member of B'nai B'rith, once was President of B'nai B'rith's Northern Region.

Bernstein wrote a memoir, a "pained, loving, intensely felt account of his parents' ordeal, and his own emotional upheaval, during President Harry Truman's loyalty purges." (Publisher's Weekly), entitled "Loyalties: A Son's Memoir," (Simon & Schuster, 1989).

Carl Bernstein's second wife was Nora Ephron; a character from her book and movie Heartburn was a thinly-veiled portrayal of him (by Jack Nicholson). He was portrayed by Dustin Hoffman in the film version of All the President's Men. He was also portrayed by Bruce McCulloch in the 1999 comedy film Dick.

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"The reality is that the media are probably the most powerful of all our institutions today and they, or rather we [journalists], too often are squandering our power and ignoring our obligations. The consequence of our abdication of responsibility is the ugly spectacle of idiot culture!"^[1]
"We are in the process of creating what deserves to be called the idiot culture. Not an idiot sub-culture, which every society has bubbling beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the culture itself. For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal."^[2]^[3]