Bergman was born in 1972, and grew up in Kiryat Bialik. His mother was a teacher and his father was an accountant. He is the youngest of three children. As a boy, he was a reporter for a youth television show. His parents were both Holocaust survivors.[3]
Bergman has written in the weekly HaOlam HaZeh, in Shoken network locales and in Haaretz,[5] and since 2000 he has been writing in the "7 Days" supplement of Yedioth Ahronoth, and is a part of the editorial team of the newspaper.
Bergman is an expert on intelligence, security, terrorism and the Middle East. Lecturer at various forums in Israel and the United States. During his career, he exposed a number of scandals, including nomissions at the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute, Nahum Manbar's connections to the Iranian arms industry, Yasser Arafat's secret bank account, the case of the broken smallpox vaccines prepared for the Gulf War, and Teddy Kollek's connections with British intelligence.[6][7]
One of the topics that Bergman dealt with for many years is the senior Egyptian source who reported the plans for the Yom Kippur War to the head of the Mossad, Zvi Zamir, and was nicknamed "Babylon" by Bergman. Following Bergman's and other journalists' exposure, it became known that the man was Ashraf Marwan.[8][9]
In 2018, Bergman joined The New York Times as an editorial member. He was appointed the magazine's correspondent in the Middle East, and serves as a reporter for the weekly supplement of The New York Times Magazine.[10]
Awards and recognition
Bergman won several journalism awards:
1995 B'nai B'rith Worlds Center Award for Journalism
2017 Sokolov Prize of written media for "a series of important and courageous journalistic exposures starting from what was done at the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute to the scandal of the dangerous vaccines against smallpox, the disclosure of the communication tapes of the Yom Kippur War and the recent conversations with the former head of the Mossad Meir Dagan."[11]
2021 special commendation by the Asian Media Owners Association.
2024 Pulitzer Prize in the international reporting category, together with The New York Times team for a series of investigations and revelations related to the Israel–Hamas war.[13][14]