In the Eye of AIDS : Afflicted CBS Producer Shows How Disease Has Spread to White, Heterosexual Suburbia

NEW YORK — Rob Hershman’s colleagues at “48 Hours” began to suspect something was amiss with the veteran CBS News producer last September.

“A couple of people mentioned it to me: ‘Hershman’s not pulling his weight,’ ” says Andrew Heyward, executive producer of “48 Hours.” “I made a mental note to check with him.”

But before his boss even had a chance to ask, Hershman, 39, raised the issue himself. “He asked for a meeting. He told me he had AIDS and that he was physically deteriorating,” Heyward says. “He said he didn’t want pity. He wanted to continue to work, at his own pace, on projects that were important to him.”

The result of that conversation will be on display tonight, when CBS airs “48 Hours: The Killer Next Door,” at 10 (on Channels 2 and 8). Set in Orange County, the hourlong broadcast is a vivid and sobering look at the AIDS epidemic and its slow spread into white, heterosexual, suburban America.

Hershman, a graduate of Harvard University and a winner of the George Foster Peabody Award for broadcast journalism, says his goal was to “to heighten awareness and to keep America from drowning in denial.”

Certainly, with its parade of mostly white, heterosexual and middle-class men, women and children battling the human immunodeficiency virus, the show is a wake-up call for viewers who believe themselves to be immune to AIDS because they aren’t gay or black or Latino.

“The people on our show are people who were absolutely convinced that AIDS was somebody else’s problem,” says Hershman, who co-produced the show with Linda Martin.

CBS News did not make the decision lightly to allow Hershman to cover the AIDS epidemic.

“As a journalistic organization, we take very seriously any issues that relate to bias, self-interest or conflict of interest,” says Eric Ober, president of CBS News.

“What we didn’t do was say, ‘Rob’s got AIDS. Perfect. Let’s have him do AIDS documentaries,’ ” Ober says. “What we did do was consider the fact that Rob is a respected veteran of CBS News, well-known to us as professional, fair and objective. Once we made that determination, we felt his expertise--his tragic expertise, if you will--would give his stories added depth and sensitivity.”

Added Heyward: “If anything, my experience has been that when journalists have a passionate interest in a subject, they tend to bend over backward to be particularly judicious and open-minded in their coverage.”

CBS News is not the only news organization that permits staffers with AIDS to contribute to coverage of the epidemic. “The paper encourages me to write as much about AIDS as I’d like,” says Jeffrey Schmalz, assistant national editor of the New York Times.

“Just as (New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter) Tom Friedman can write about Israel, just as blacks can write about civil rights, so too can people with AIDS write about the epidemic,” says Schmalz, who learned he had AIDS after suffering a grand mal seizure in the Times’ newsroom in December, 1990.

“There are some limits,” Schmalz says. “I would not think someone with AIDS (who is) an AIDS reporter ought to be part of an ACT UP demonstration at the National Institutes of Health. . . . If there are any questions, the reporter or the editor and his senior editors have to talk back and forth about what is acceptable.”

Besides the ethical question, CBS, whose advertising revenues depend upon the ratings its shows garner, had to determine whether America was ready to hear this particular show’s message.

“I certainly played the role of commercial television producer,” Heyward says. “I was a tough sell. (But) audience maximization isn’t the only criterion on which we base our decisions. . . . At a certain point you have to say: ‘Is this an interesting story? Is it worthwhile? Can we tell it well?’ And if the answer is yes, you have to let the chips fall where they may.”

The show, anchored by Dan Rather, contains six segments. In one, viewers will be seeing a young schoolteacher’s aide, Kirk Moretti, nervously telephoning his mother to inform her that he is infected with HIV. “That was the hardest thing I’ve done in my life,” he confides to friends later.

In another, the camera records the explanation of an Armstrong Garden Centers executive for slashing health insurance benefits for AIDS patients after Kimberly Richartz, the wife of Armstrong employee Joel Richartz, and their daughter, Meghan, fell sick with AIDS. “It’s simply a business decision,” says Mike Kuntz, Armstrong’s chief executive officer.

“To take away the insurance in the middle of treatment is murder,” says Meghan’s grandmother, Nancy Clark. “I hate them for it.”

“I certainly believe, because that’s what I’ve done with my career, that people learn things through stories,” says Hershman, who pushed the Orange County project to completion despite persistent and debilitating fevers while shooting. “Television is a very direct medium.”

Like many urban gay men in their 30s, Hershman is immersed in the epidemic. His lover of 10 years, advertising executive Ronald James, died in 1989 at the age of 33. His current partner, producer and former Disney production executive Gary Barton, is himself infected with HIV.

Despite the epidemic’s catastrophic impact on gay men, Hershman--having already done stories for “The CBS Evening News” and other news shows about AIDS among gay men--believes it is time for television to tell the broader AIDS story.

“I decided that as a gay man, I didn’t want to ‘own’ the epidemic,” he says. “America needs to see that the people next door may be fighting this virus too.

“As the epidemic seeps into wider society, it’s my hope that my journalism will allow other people to avoid the mistakes the gay community made during the early years of the epidemic,” he says.

Ultimately he recognizes that he is powerless to alter other people’s behavior. “All I can do is tell honest stories and put them out with as much heart and intensity as I can,” Hershman says. “I could go on disability at any moment, but I still have stories to tell.”