Barbara Walters, Pioneering Broadcast Journalist, Dies
Barbara Walters is seen on her last day as co-host of the “Today” show in 1976.
Barbara Walters, an iconic broadcast journalist who broke down barriers for women in the media, has died Friday, according to ABC News. She was 93.
In a career that spanned more than five decades, Walters established herself as one of television’s most prominent and respected female presenters. She made history when she became co-host of the ABC Evening News in 1976, becoming the first woman to co-host an evening news channel on national television.
She is best known for her stint as co-host on ABC’s 20/20, a role she held for 25 years. During that time, she interviewed some of the world’s most influential and controversial leaders, celebrities and political figures – including former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, actress Katharine Hepburn and pop icon Michael Jackson – in often emotional and intense segments.
Walters interviews former President Richard Nixon about his presidency in “20/20” in May 1985.
She has also interviewed every American President since Richard Nixon. (She interviewed Donald Trump and Melania Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign and interviewed Joe Biden in 2014 when he was vice president.)
Walters later co-founded the daytime talk show The View, which premiered in 1997 and featured a cast of female co-hosts.
“It was a simple idea: four women of different generations and different personalities and different opinions sit down and talk,” she said in a 2012 interview with Makers. “Not women trying to outdo each other, but being able to have those different discussions and arguments and liking each other.”
But to reach that level of success and establish her status as a boundary-pushing journalist, she’s struggled for years to be heard. you faced persistent sexism early in her career at a time when men dominated the news industry.
I remember sending a memo from NBC News to the President at the time saying, ‘Shouldn’t we do something about the women’s movement?’ And at the top of my memo was scrawled, ‘Not enough interest.’Barbara Walters
Walters began working in front of the camera on NBC’s “Today,” initially covering lighter assignments — which she dubbed “teamaker interviews” — and weather reports as the show’s “Today Girl.” She was eventually allowed to research and write for news programs, becoming the program’s first female co-host in 1974.
“I remember sending a memo from NBC News to the president at the time, saying, ‘Shouldn’t we do something about the women’s movement?'” she recalled in the Makers interview. “And scrawled at the top of my memo was, ‘Not enough interest.'”
She left NBC News two years later to co-host ABC Evening News with Harry Reasoner, becoming the first female co-host in the evening’s history.
“I was co-anchoring with a man, Harry Reasoner, who couldn’t accept me,” Walters told the ABC Evening News in 2012 of her co-anchor.
“I would walk into this studio and Harry would sit with the stagehands and they would all be joking and ignoring me. No one would speak to me,” she added. “It was so lonely and I failed. And I read about it in every newspaper and magazine.”
Walters and co-host Harry Reasoner on October 4, 1976, Walter’s first night on the ABC Evening News.
Back then Time magazine described Walter’s move to prime time in an article titled “Will the morning star shine at night?”
Shine did: When she joined ABC, Walters became the first female news anchor to do one $1 million annual salary.
“Overnight I became a multi-million dollar news baby after being offered a salary that was, on the surface, at least twice anyone else in the news business, including Walter Cronkite,” Walters wrote in her 2008 memoir Audition. ”
“Almost every television journalist, including Harry Reasoner, walked into their boss’ office, demanded a raise and got it,” she wrote. “Well, you’re welcome.”
We all realize that without her we would not have had a shoulder to stand on. We can all now glide along this road that she has literally laid for us, brick by brick.Oprah Winfrey
Walters consistently secured some of the hottest news topics for Today, ABC Evening News, 20/20 and later The View and her annual special Barbara Walters’ 10 Most Fascinating People.
She famously met with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat for a joint interview 1977, when the two foreign leaders began talks for a historic peace deal.
Walters retired from on-air news in May 2014, but has returned for occasional specials over the following years, including interviewing the Trumps during the 2016 election cycle.
Walters won three Daytime Emmy Awards (she was nominated for 31), a Primetime Emmy (out of 11 nominations), and seven News and Documentary Emmys.
Walter’s legacy of telling incisive, entertaining stories with compassion and poise inspired women to excel in an industry where they were once unwelcome.
Walters included Oprah Winfrey in her cast for Barbara Walters Presents: The 10 Most Fascinating People of 2014.
“I was 16 years old, saw her on TV and got the inspiration to think, ‘Maybe I could do that,'” Oprah Winfrey told E! News 2014. “First year of my television career [I] actually created this facade of posing as Barbara Walters and trying to sit and talk and act like her. … We all realize that without her we would not have had a shoulder to stand on. We can all now glide down this road that she literally laid brick by brick for us.”
Changing the way the news industry thought about women was important to Walters.
“I’ve influenced the way women are viewed and that’s important to me,” she said Bloomberg BusinessWeek in August 2013. “If I had done stories and interviews that have been done by men in the past and I opened the door a little, and now it goes without saying, that would be a legacy I could be proud of.”
Judah Robinson and Jackson Connor contributed to this report.
