TV Journalist

This time it wasn't "Face the Nation"; it was "Face the Alumni." GEORGE HERMAN '41 was on a busman's holiday, moderating a panel discussion at June's reunion on "Should We Change Careers at 50? A Challenge for Graduates."

Moderator of CBS's headline-making Sunday show, television correspondent with a first-love fondness for radio, writer and analyst, Herman has ranged the world, covering the news and interviewing the great, the near-great, and the would-be-great since he completed Columbia Journalism School in 1942.

He has been with Columbia Broadcasting since 1944: as a news writer, as war correspondent covering Korea from Inchon through the prisoner exchange, as Far East bureau chief, as White House correspondent and Washington correspondent, and on general assignment.

Herman covered the White House under Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy. Above and beyond the intrinsic advantages of the job, the first assignment won him a pretty redhead on Press Secretary James Haggerty's staff, the second high visibility as CBS representative at the memorable "rocking chair conference."

His current assignment, Herman's favorite, is as general correspondent, available for any story, anywhere, any time, subject only to his weekly commitment to "Face the Nation." His specialties are the Supreme Court and scientific matters, but assignments range far beyond. General assignment, Herman says with what might strike his deskbound contemporaries as understatement elevated to a high art, "is never dull."

"Face the Nation," on which Herman is joined by one network colleague and one print journalist each week, is probably the work with which he is most closely identified. Be it a spectacular like the McGovern-Humphrey debate or an interview with a lesser political light, the program invariably produces quotable copy for evening newscasts and Monday morning dailies.

Naming most newsworthy programs is relatively easy, but Herman demurs at bestowing fancy-footwork awards for guests most adept at ducking questions: "Anyone long in public life knows how to answer the question he wished you had asked." His theory is "to press the guest twice, perhaps three times, for a response and then drop the matter. The viewer will get the idea by that time." And Herman takes his responsibility as host quite literally. "They are guests; my job is to interview, not to break the subject down." His principal role, he contends, is that of listener. The aside, the throwaway line, pursued, frequently gets closer to the heart of the issue than a battery of prepared questions, he finds.

Herman deplores the school of advocacy journalism which proclaims that "there can be no neutrality in the battle between good and evil." On "Face the Nation," in radio scripts, lectures, or news analysis he writes for magazines, "I operate on the 18th-century principle of objectivity." Feeling no obligation "to lead the public into truth and light," he is content "to lay out the possibilities" and let listener or reader make up his own mind.

As an exercise in humility, he counsels journalism students to record their "non-negotiable" convictions, then go back later and underline those which subsequently proved wrong. Skepticism of popular opinions, as well as his concern for objectivity, he counts as part of his Dartmouth legacy.

Attacks on the press will continue "as long as they're politically profitable and as long as the consumer doesn't object," Herman predicts. Public approval stems in part from the ad hominem approach of some of his journalistic confreres, in part from a "hate-the-messenger" syndrome.

Which administration has provided the best climate for newsmen? "Kennedy's without a doubt. The press had a love affair with JFK, and the news management controversy was in the nature of a lovers' quarrel. His staff was young and bright, with a magnificent arrogance in thinking they could tell two-thirds of a story and leave the rest out. But it didn't work."

Radio remains an important facet of Herman's work. He was co-anchorman for the 1972 political conventions, the seventh of the quadriennial brouhahas he has covered. He writes and tapes a couple of short oral essays each week for the "By-Line" series — "some funny, some serious, all touching everyone's life in some way." Herman particularly enjoys writing the commentaries, and his audience reciprocates — he receives more mail response from his radio broadcasts than from "Face the Nation."

Although last-minute assignments occasionally preempt planned Hanover gatherings, Herman retains close ties with the College. He is on the advisory board for Alumni College, which he and the beautiful redhead and their three sons have attended twice.

"Change Careers at 50?" Not Herman. He concedes he'd like to reduce some of the peripatetic aspects of his trade, to have more time for in-depth writing, but his commitment to the news media is firm. "This is George Herman for CBS News" is a line you will be hearing for a long time.