For decades, the journalistic norm had been that the private lives of public officials remained private unless that life impinged on public performance.

He is also a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery and author of the memoir The Place to Be: Washington CBS and the Glory Days of Television News. In the fall of 1954 Mudd enrolled in the University of Richmond School of Law but dropped out after a semester. He began his journalism career in Richmond Virginia as a reporter for The Richmond News Leader and for radio station WRNL.

Mudd is the recipient of the Peabody Award the Joan Shorenstein Award for DistinguiRoger Muddd Washington Reporting and five Emmy Awards. S.