Carl Milton Bernstein (/ˈbɜːrnstiːn/ BURN-steen; born February 14, 1944) is an American investigative journalist and author. While a young reporter for The Washington Post in 1972, Bernstein was teamed up with Bob Woodward, and the two did much of the original news reporting on the Watergate scandal. These scandals led to numerous government investigations and the eventual resignation of President Richard Nixon. The work of Woodward and Bernstein was called "maybe the single greatest reporting effort of all time" by longtime journalism figure Gene Roberts.
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 seven books: All the President's Men, The Final Days, and The Secret Man, with Bob Woodward; His Holiness: John Paul II and the History of Our Time, with Marco Politi; Loyalties; A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton; and Chasing History, a memoir of his early years in journalism. Additionally, he is a regular political commentator on CNN.
Bernstein was born to a secular Jewish family in Washington, D.C., the son of Sylvia (née Walker) and Alfred Bernstein. Both his parents were civil-rights activists and members of the Communist Party USA in the 1940s. 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. 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". The Star, however, unofficially required a college degree to write for the paper.

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