Carl Bernstein

Bernstein's career since Watergate has continued to focus on the theme of the use and abuse of power via books and magazine articles. He has also done reporting for television and opinion commentary. He is the author or co-author of six books: All the President's Men (1974) and The Final Days (1976), both with Bob Woodward; Loyalties: A Son's Memoir (1989); His Holiness: John Paul II and the History of Our Time (1996) with Marco Politi; A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton (2007);^[4] and Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom (2022), a memoir of his early years in journalism. Additionally, he is a regular political commentator on CNN.

Early life and career[edit]

Bernstein was born to a secular Jewish family in Washington, D.C.,^[5][6][7] the son of Sylvia (née Walker) and Alfred Bernstein.^[8][9] Both his parents were civil-rights activists and members of the Communist Party USA in the 1940s.^[8][9] He attended Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland, where he worked as circulation and exchange manager for the school's newspaper Silver Chips.^[10] He began his journalism career at the age of 16 when he became a copyboy for The Washington Star and moved "quickly through the ranks".^[4] The Star, however, unofficially required a college degree to write for the paper.^[11]


At the University of Maryland, College Park, he was a reporter for the school's independent daily, The Diamondback.^[12] However, Bernstein was dismissed from the university after the fall 1964 semester for bad grades.^[13][14]


In 1965, Bernstein left the Star to become a full-time reporter for the Elizabeth Daily Journal in New Jersey.^[15] While there, he won first prize in New Jersey's press association for investigative reporting, feature writing, and news on a deadline.^[4] In 1966, Bernstein left New Jersey and began reporting for The Washington Post, where he covered every aspect of local news and became known as one of the paper's best writing stylists.^[16]

After Watergate[edit]

Bernstein left the Post in 1977 and expanded into other areas due to his reputation from the Watergate reporting. He joined broadcast news in a high growth period. He worked at ABC, CNN, and CBS as a political commentator, and was a spokesman in various television commercials.^[20] He began investigating the secret cooperation between the CIA and American media during the Cold War. He spent a year in his research, which was published as a 25,000-word article in Rolling Stone magazine.^[21]


He then began working for ABC News. Between 1980 and 1984, Bernstein was the network's Washington Bureau Chief and then a senior correspondent. In 1982, for ABC's Nightline, Bernstein was the first to report during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon that Ariel Sharon had "deceived the cabinet about the real intention of the operation—to drive the Palestinians out of Lebanon, not (as he had claimed) to merely establish a 25-kilometer security zone north from the border".


Two years after leaving ABC News, Bernstein released the book Loyalties: A Son's Memoir, in which he revealed that his parents had been members of the Communist Party of America. The assertion shocked some because even J. Edgar Hoover had tried and been unable to prove that Bernstein's parents had been party members.^[17]


In 1992, for Time, Bernstein wrote a cover story publicizing the alliance between Pope John Paul II and President Ronald Reagan. Later, along with Vatican expert Marco Politi, he published a papal biography entitled His Holiness. Bernstein wrote in the 1996 book that the Pope's role in supporting Solidarity in his native Poland, and his geopolitical dexterity combined with enormous spiritual influence, was a principal factor in the downfall of communism in Europe.^[22]


In 1992, Bernstein wrote a cover story for The New Republic magazine indicting modern journalism for its sensationalism and celebration of gossip over real news. The article was entitled "The Idiot Culture".


Bernstein's biography of Hillary Rodham Clinton, A Woman In Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton, was published by Alfred A. Knopf on June 5, 2007. Knopf had a first printing of 275,000 copies. It appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list for three weeks.^[23] A CBS News end-of-year survey of publishing "hits and misses" included A Woman in Charge in the "miss" category and implied that its total sales were somewhere in the range of perhaps 55,000–65,000 copies.^[24]


Bernstein is a frequent guest and analyst on television news programs, and in 2011 wrote articles for Newsweek/The Daily Beast, comparing Rupert Murdoch's News of the World phone-hacking scandal to Watergate.^[25]


In 2012, Carl Bernstein spoke at a rally of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran, an opposition Iranian organization that had previously been listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the United States, reportedly receiving a payment for his speech.^[26]

Personal life[edit]

Bernstein has been married three times, first to a fellow reporter at The Washington Post, Carol Honsa; then to writer and director Nora Ephron from 1976 to 1980; and since 2003 to the former model Christine Kuehbeck.


During his marriage to Ephron, Bernstein met Margaret Jay, daughter of British Prime Minister James Callaghan and wife of Peter Jay, then UK ambassador to the United States. They had a much-publicized extramarital relationship in 1979. Margaret later became a government minister in her own right.^[27] Bernstein and second wife Ephron already had an infant son, Jacob, and she was pregnant with their second son, Max, in 1979 when she learned of her husband's affair with Jay. Ephron delivered Max prematurely after finding out.^[28] Ephron was inspired by the events to write the 1983 novel Heartburn,^[27] which was made into a 1986 film starring Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson.


While single, in the 1980s, Bernstein became known for dating Bianca Jagger, Martha Stewart, and Elizabeth Taylor,^[17] among others.