Excerpt from the 1968 Dateline for The Lowell Thomas Award 1967:
Best radio interpretation of foreign affairs
James Robinson and Wells hanging, NBC, for “red China: struggle for power.”
Welles Hangen, a later comer to the Asian region, has been established in Hong Kong since August, 1966, with eyes and ears trained on the colony’s nearest neighbor. Before taking up his present assignment he spent a year at Columbia University on a fellowship from the Council on Foreign Relations, in intensive study of the Chinese language and of far Eastern politics. At present he has wedged himself firmly into the inner circle of knowledgeable China-watchers.
As a prelude and an aid to his grasp of Chinese affairs, he has had years in West Germany, India and the Middle East for NBC news, and earlier, others in Moscow, Turkey and Germany, for the New York Times. His book The Muted Revolution – East Germany’s Challenge to Russia in the West, make him an OPC award winner last year– which may be why the face is familiar.
Between them James Robinson and Wells Hangen have mustered 33 years as foreign correspondents, which helps to explain the excellence attributed to their NBC documentary on “Red China: Struggle for Power,” adjudged best in category 6.
Robinson who came to NBC as Tokyo bureau chief in 1952, has covered the Far East from Korea to Vietnam to mainland China and pre-Communist days. Before turning to journalism, he was a teacher at Tsinghua University in Peking.