George Herman, 85, the longtime Face the Nation moderator who spent 43 years covering politics and international affairs for CBS News, died Tuesday of heart failure following a long illness, according to the network.
Herman was the first reporter to broadcast a story about the break-in at
the Democratic Committee headquarters in 1972, and co-anchored coverage of
the Senate Watergate hearings.
Hewas the longest-running moderator of Face the Nation, serving 14
years in that post.
Herman began his career with CBS in 1944 as a radio news writer. He made
his on-air debut in 1945, describing the first of Japan's surrenders in WWII.
When the story broke, Herman ad libbed on the air for 20 minutes while the network scrambled to get an anchor into the studio.
He appeared on TV for the first time during the 1948 Democratic
Convention in Philadelphia, the first to be televised.
In 1949 he traveled to Asia, providing CBS News with its first sound and film television reports from abroad, covering Vietnamese terror attacks against the French in Hanoi, Communist jungle warfare against the British in Malaya and border raids by Communist North Koreans.
At the outbreak of the Korean War, Herman landed with the U.N. troops at
Inchon as a combat reporter, then spent three years covering the war from
Asia.
Herman was born Jan. 14, 1920, in New York City, earned a B.A. in
mathematics from Dartmouth in 1941 and a master's degree in journalism from
Columbia. He left CBS News in 1987.
"George Herman was a terrific reporter and an even better person," said
CBS News correspondent Bob Schieffer, the current moderator of Face the
Nation. "He was the epitome of what a CBS News correspondent should be --
smart, thoughtful, fair and courageous."
Herman is survived by his wife of 50 years, Patricia, three sons and six
grandchildren.
