In Steven Spielberg’s The Post, which newspaper does Ben Bradlee edit?

In Steven Spielberg’s The Post, Ben Bradlee edits The Washington Post.

Bradlee is the newspaper’s executive editor during the 1971 publication of the Pentagon Papers. Tom Hanks plays Bradlee, while Meryl Streep plays publisher Katharine Graham. Their newsroom must decide whether to publish classified documents about the United States government’s history of involvement in the Vietnam War.

The film dramatizes the pressure surrounding the newspaper’s decision, including threats of legal action and concerns about the company’s financial future. The Washington Post had recently become a publicly traded company, making the risks especially serious for Graham and her colleagues.

The Pentagon Papers were originally obtained by The New York Times, which published the first installments. The Washington Post later published its own material from the documents. Because both newspapers are central to the real historical episode, viewers sometimes identify the wrong paper when recalling the film’s newsroom.