Jerald Franklin terHorst (July 11, 1922 – March 31, 2010) was an American journalist who served as the 14th White House Press Secretary during the first month of Gerald Ford's presidency.

[1] His resignation in protest of Ford's unconditional pardon of former president Richard Nixon is still regarded as a rare act of conscience by a high-ranking public official.

His education was interrupted yet again when World War II broke out; he served in the United States Marine Corps from 1943 to 1946 in the Pacific theater.

He was applauded for "restoring openness and honesty to the White House" at a time when morale was low, after the Watergate scandal and the Nixon administration's deliberate misrepresentations.

[5] His successor as Press Secretary was NBC reporter Ron Nessen, who served until the end of the Ford Administration.

Other panelists included Robert Hartmann, White House Counsel during the Ford administration; Benton Becker, Special Counsel to Ford who negotiated the wording and acceptance of Nixon's pardon; and Herbert Miller, Nixon's personal attorney during the conclusion of the Watergate scandal.

This was re-broadcast January 6, 2007, as a segment of Contemporary History on C-SPAN 3 as part of their public affairs programming in the wake of Ford's death.

Although other panelists expressed retroactive support for the pardon, terHorst disagreed: "I would still say I am exactly where I was 25 years ago, that it set up a double standard of justice" in which Nixon was granted highly favorable treatment in comparison to his co-conspirators or the men who had evaded the Vietnam War draft.