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Carl Bernstein

As a contributing editor at Time, Bernstein wrote a cover story in 1992 revealing a clandestine alliance between Pope John Paul II and President Ronald Reagan to aid the Solidarity labor movement in Poland-an article that led former Soviet President Gorbachev to respond in The New York Times that "without this Pope, none of the events in Eastern Europe"-the fall of communism-"would have occurred." Bernstein then began work (with Vatican expert Marco Politi) on his papal biography, John Paul II and the History of Our Time. In 1992, Bernstein wrote a cover story for The New Republic magazine entitled "The Idiot Culture"-a scathing (and prescient) indictment of the sensationalist agenda overtaking much of American journalism. His critique argued that the journalistic legacy of Watergate is at odds with an increasingly irresponsible media culture, dominated by huge conglomerates, that in the interest of profits (rather than truth) routinely celebrates gossip, the lurid and the loopy, and manufactured controversy at the expense of real reporting. Bernstein has also served as Executive Vice President and Editor of Voter.com, named by Forbes Magazine as the best political site on the Web. Though only 28 when he began covering Watergate, Bernstein by then already had 12 years of... Next

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