Steven L Herman

Steven L Herman is the chief national correspondent for the Voice of America. From early 2017 through August of 2021, Steve was senior White House correspondent and subsequently VOA's White House bureau chief. During the Donald Trump administration, Steve was the designated radio reporter on dozens of Air Force One domestic and international flights, including the 45th president's final flight to Florida. Steve, in 2020, covered both the Republican incumbent's campaign, as well as that of the Democratic challenger and eventual victor, Joe Biden. His latest book, Behind the White House Curtain: A Senior Journalist’s Story of Covering the President — and Why It Matters, was published in June of 2024 by Kent State University Press. Steve spent more than a quarter of a century in Asia, including years of reporting from Tokyo and subsequently as a VOA correspondent and bureau chief in India, South Korea and Thailand. Steve also served in 2016 as VOA's senior diplomatic correspondent, based at the State Department and traveling to numerous countries with Secretary of State John Kerry. Steve was one of 18 journalists from around the world who composed the Kiplinger Fellowship in Climate Change Reporting in 2022 at Ohio University. He was also named the JURIST Journalist in Residence at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law for 2022-23. Steve has been an adjunct lecturer in the journalism department at the University of Richmond and an adjunct assistant professor at Shenandoah University. He is current a Council on Foreign Relations higher education ambassador. Steve has given presentations on such subjects as geo-politics, broadcast journalism and news literacy at numerous universities, media organizations and other institutions, including in Cambodia, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States. Recent guest lecture appearances have included classes at Claremont McKenna College, Fordham University, National Intelligence University, Ohio State University School of Communication, OLLI/George Mason University, Seattle Central College, University of Mary Washington and the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. Among the major news stories Steve has covered on scene over the decades include the Baneberry nuclear federal court trial (1979), MGM Grand Hotel fire (1980), Thai April Fool's coup (1981), Squeaky Fromme's prison escape (1987), the Kobe earthquake (1995), the Tokyo subway sarin attack (1995), handover of Hong Kong (1997), the war in Afghanistan (2007-2010), end of the Sri Lanka civil war (2009), the Fukushima nuclear disaster (2011), Typhoon Haiyan (2013), Thai coup (2014), the Erawan Shrine bombing (2015) and the Gorkha earthquake (2015). Articles, columns and reviews by Steve have been published in numerous newspapers and magazines including the Far Eastern Economic Review, Harvard Summer Review, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Japan Quarterly, Japan Times, Number 1 Shimbun, On the Air, Popular Communications, Public Diplomacy Today, Proceedings (U.S. Naval Institute), Radio World, Shukan Bunshun, Shukan Gendai, South China Morning Post and the Wall Street Journal. In addition to years of reporting for AP, including as the wire service's state broadcast editor in West Virginia, Steve's career has also included stints as a media executive in Asia, launching Discovery Channel and Animal Planet in Japan. He was an executive producer of the 2004 documentary The History of America's Secret Casinos. Steve was also the field producer in Sichuan, China for the video news release for the Warner Bros. 1995 film The Amazing Panda Adventure. Steve is a life member of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan, of which he was elected president for the 1997-98 term. He also served as president of the Seoul Foreign Correspondents' Club and the Japan-America Club of The American University and is a former vice president of the DC chapter of AAJA. Steve was also previously on the board of governors of the Overseas Press Club of America. He served for eight consecutive years on the board of governors of the American Foreign Service Association. Steve is an East West Center media alumnus, a First Cohort of the Oxford Climate Journalism Network at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford and a member of the Authors Guild, the National Press Club, the Public Diplomacy Council of America, SAJA, SPJ and the White House Correspondents Association.