Barbara Walters, Legendary Journalist And First Female Evening News Anchor, Has Passed Away At 93
Image source: KABC
Barbara Walters passed away on Friday, December 30, at her home in New York at the age of 93. Her 50+ years in journalism and television news broadcasting paved the way for other women in the field.
Walters was born on September 25, 1929, in Boston to Dena and Louis "Lou" Walters. Her career began in 1961 as a writer on NBC’s Today, working her way up from there to lighter assignments during the time when female journalists were not taken seriously. She would officially become the program’s first female co-host in 1974 and would earn an Emmy for Outstanding Talk Show Host in 1975.
After moving to ABC News in 1976, she became the first woman to anchor the ABC Evening News (known today as ABC World News Tonight). On her first ABC Evening News broadcast, she had an exclusive with Earl Butz, President Gerald Ford's Secretary of Agriculture who had just resigned after telling a racist joke. Walters would go on to win 11 of her 12 Emmy Awards while at ABC News.
Image Source: The New York Times
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In 1979, she became a co-host of the network’s news magazine 20/20. She was known for being well-prepared and detailed with her research, no matter who she was interviewing. She had interviewed every U.S. president and first lady from the Nixons to the Obamas, and foreign leaders like Putin, Yeltsin, Gaddafi, Castro, Sadat, Begin, and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. She even had a notable interview with Monica Lewinsky at the peak of the Clinton scandal. A small selection of interviewed celebrities included David Letterman, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Justin Timberlake, and plenty of Oscar nominees on The Barbara Walters Special, which ran before the ceremony. In 1997, she created The View, the still-running ABC talk show featuring various configurations of panels of women discussing sociopolitics and entertainment. She was one of the co-hosts until May 2014, and also served as the show’s executive producer. She had left 20/20 in 2004 and stopped her pre-Oscars special in 2010.
While she was known as a serious journalist, it did not stop her from having a little fun from time to time. This included an interview with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the era of the live-action film trilogy and dropping by Saturday Night Live at the end of her run on The View to comment on the show’s 40 years of impressions of her by Gilda Radner and Cheri Oteri.
After stepping back from The View, she would do occasional interviews and specials for ABC News, her last being in December 2015 with then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.
She is survived by her daughter, Jacqueline Danforth.
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