George Herman, 85; TV Reporter Was Longtime Host of ‘Face the Nation’

George Herman, a pioneering CBS reporter who helped develop television news in its earliest decades and the longest-reigning moderator of the network’s venerable “Face the Nation,” died Tuesday. He was 85.

Herman died at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C., of heart failure after a long illness.

A White House correspondent during the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, Herman was well-versed in Washington insider politics and made a savvy, erudite host for the long-running Sunday morning news show “Face the Nation.”

He held the chair from 1969 to 1983, interviewing such topical guests as the Ayatollah Khomeini in exile outside Paris shortly before his return to Tehran to rule a fundamentalist Islamic Iran, and Sen. Thomas F. Eagleton (D-Mo.), whose acknowledgment of treatment for depression cost him the vice presidential candidacy in 1972 on the Democratic Party ticket led by South Dakota Sen. George McGovern.

“George Herman was a terrific reporter and even better person ... smart, thoughtful, fair and courageous,” Bob Schieffer, the current “Face the Nation” moderator, said Tuesday. “The standards he set made ‘Face the Nation’ one of the most respected broadcasts in television.”

Born on Jan. 14, 1920, in New York City, Herman earned a math degree from Dartmouth and a master’s in journalism from Columbia before beginning his career at New York’s WQXR Radio in 1942. Two years later he joined CBS News as a radio news writer and soon rose to night editor.

Herman embraced the new medium of television and set out to make it his own.

He first appeared on camera analyzing caucus results for Harry Truman at the 1948 Democratic Convention in Philadelphia, the first televised national political convention. Herman covered every presidential nominating convention from 1956 through 1980.

In 1949, with only the tenuous job title of stringer, Herman went to Asia with a 16-millimeter camera and an audio recording machine. He sent back CBS News’ first sound and film television reports from abroad -- accounts of Vietnamese attacks against the French in Hanoi, Communist jungle warfare against the British in Malaya and border raids by Communist North Koreans.

By the time he returned in 1950, his efforts had earned him a position as full-fledged CBS News correspondent.

At the outbreak of the Korean War, he was assigned to follow the troops, which he did until fighting ceased three years later.

Capping his years of covering the White House in 1963, Herman worked at the White House for 20 straight hours reporting on the aftermath of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

Moving from the White House to general assignment, he delivered the first broadcast report of the Watergate break-in at Democratic Party headquarters in 1972.

Herman was so highly respected that, when he left “Face the Nation” in 1983, a CBS executive assured the Washington Post: “Although George is nearing 65, he can work at CBS just as long as he wants to.”

Nevertheless, Herman was forced out in a belt-tightening that cost 70 news positions in July 1986. He retired at the end of his contract in January 1987 after 43 years with the network.

Herman was known for his wit as well as his wisdom.

Intrigued by a word he found in a government report but not in the dictionary in 1974 --”disinformation”-- he delivered a radio commentary that was reproduced widely in various media.

Herman twitted the government wordmeisters by incorporating their prefix “dis” instead of the traditional “mis” into several words and pondering usage of the results, such as “distake” and “disanthrope.”

He is survived by his wife of 50 years, Patricia; three sons, Charles of Glenview, Ill., Scott of Bethesda, Md., and Douglas of Baltimore; and six grandchildren.