May 7: Carl Bernstein and Watergate

The Washington Post won a Pulitzer Prize on this date in 1973 for the investigative reporting of Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward into the Watergate break-in and cover-up of the Nixon Administration. Their journalism led to the indictment of H.R. Haldeman, John Erlichman, Charles Colson, and John Mitchell, among other Nixon cronies, and to the eventual resignation of the President himself. Bernstein is the son of Jewish communists who were hounded during the McCarthy period, as described in his 1989 book, Loyalties: A Son’s Memoir. In a 1977 Rolling Stone article, Bernstein broke the news that over 400 American journalists since 1952 had served the Central Intelligence Agency in secrecy, performing tasks “from simple intelligence gathering to serving as go‑betweens with spies,” often “with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations.”

“The lowest form of popular culture — lack of information, misinformation, misinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives — has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.”—Carl Bernstein