Barbara Walters, pioneering TV journalist, dies at 93

Barbara Walters, a pioneering TV broadcaster who paved the way for women in a male-dominated medium, died on Friday. He is 93 years old.

His death was confirmed by his representative, Cindi Berger, who said Walters died peacefully at his home surrounded by loved ones.

“He lived without regrets,” Berger said. “She was a trailblazer not only for female journalists, but for all women.”

ABC, the network where he last worked, aired a special report Friday night announcing Walters’ death and reflecting on his career. Bob Iger, CEO of the Walt Disney Company, the parent of ABC, said in a statement that Walters died Friday afternoon at his home in New York City.

He called her “a pioneer not only for women in journalism but for journalism itself.”

Walters was known in recent years as the co-creator and matriarch of ABC’s daytime hit show “The View,” but older viewers remember her as the first female anchor of a network news program and the main interviewer on television. He earned his reputation for his love of meticulous preparation, whether he was interviewing a scoundrel or a diva, a model or an assassin.

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“I do a lot of homework, I know more about the person than they know about themselves,” Walters said in a 2014 television special.

That drive proved essential to her success. When she entered the business in 1961 as a writer on NBC’s “TODAY” show, the idea of ​​a woman sitting down and interviewing a sitting president on prime-time network television (which she did just over a decade later) seemed more fantasy than reality in an industry dominated by people like Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite.

“They’re playing on a field that’s an old boy’s network, literally and figuratively, and they’re never answering,” Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, told NBC. News before Walters’ death.

“At some point, things that had been a liability for her, being a woman trying to get a place in a male-dominated industry, started to become an asset,” Thompson said. “She is smart and prepared, but at the same time she seems to be more compassionate (than her male colleagues).

“Barbara Walters proves to be an evolutionary step between Edward R. Murrow and Oprah Winfrey.”

In some ways, Walters has been preparing for these trademark interviews all his life. Born in Boston on September 25, 1929, Barbara Jill Walters could see the rich and famous as the daughter of nightlife impresario Lou Walters, who owned clubs up and down the East Coast.

“I learned that celebrities are human beings,” Walters said in 2014. “I never thought of celebrities as being so perfect and wonderful that I had to leave them alone.”

Inheriting her father’s drive, Walters graduated from Sarah Lawrence College with a bachelor’s degree in English and broke into journalism as an assistant at NBC affiliate WRCA-TV. In 1955, she married businessman Robert Henry Katz, but her first love remained in her career. The couple divorced three years later.

Employed as a writer and researcher on “TODAY,” Walters rose to become the show’s only female producer and began presenting on the air occasionally as the “TODAY Girl,” a reporting role reserved for the show’s fashion, lifestyle trends and weather prequels. held, among others, by Florence Henderson of “Brady Bunch” fame.

Hardly the kind of hard reporting that Walters clearly aspired to.

On the air, Walters married theater producer Lee Guber in 1963, with whom they adopted a daughter, Jacqueline, named after Walters’ sister, who was developmentally disabled. The marriage would last 13 years.

His big breakthrough came with the task of traveling with Jacqueline Kennedy on the first lady’s trip to India in 1962. That led to more recent pieces and the status of being in charge of hosting together with Hugh Downs – although he did not get it officially. title until 1974. By then, Downs had left the network and was replaced by Frank McGee.

McGee, who died shortly after partnering with Walters, demanded that he ask Walters three questions for each of his studio interviews. After all, he is a real journalist.

So Walters began conducting interviews outside the studio, quickly building a reputation as an incisive and investigative questioner.

People were watching — including executives at rival networks. Walters was lured to ABC to become the first female co-anchor of a major newscast with an unprecedented annual salary of $1 million. Soon, however, viewers could sense the tension between Walters and co-anchor Harry Reasoner, who couldn’t be bothered to hide his displeasure with the former “TODAY Girl” who he thought was his equal.

His new celebrity also earned him the best honor: he struggled to pronounce the hard R reported by Gilda Radner on “Saturday Night Live.” Walters later admitted that he did not find the “Baba Wawa” skit funny.

With the ratings of her ABC news program disappointing, Walters’ career was saved by a prime-time interview special she started for ABC. His first interview featured President-elect Jimmy Carter, and within a year he had arranged interviews with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat – a year before the historic peace agreement.

In 1979 he reunited with Downs on the ABC newsmagazine show, “20/20,” beginning a successful 25-year run.

But her interview remains Walters’ passion, composing a mix of tough and funny questions on her trademark 3×5 index cards and messing with the order even when the cameras start rolling. In a 2014 television special commemorating her retirement from TV journalism, Walters shared a signed photo of Cuban despot Fidel Castro that hung on her wall: “For the longest and hardest interview I’ve ever done in my life.”

Although Walters received a lot of criticism for asking Katherine Hepburn, “What tree are you?” – in justice, follow up to what the legendary actor has said – he can send the most difficult questions, like looking Russian President Vladimir Putin in the eye and asking him if he has ever ordered the death of a rival.

An exclusive interview with Monica Lewinsky in 1999 earned the highest ratings in history for a prime-time interview. In 1997, Walters debuted a new show closer to her “TODAY” roots: a mid-morning talk show with an all-female panel called “The View.” When he became the co-executive producer and sat at the table, he tapped Meredith Vieira as the first moderator.

Over the years, the hit show has included Whoopi Goldberg, Star Jones, Lisa Ling, Joy Behar, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Rosie O’Donnell and Meghan McCain among the panelists.

While Walters has generally managed to avoid controversy throughout his long career, he caused a stir with revelations that he had an affair with Sen. Edward Brooke, R-Mass., during the 1970s.

After nearly 60 years in journalism, Walters announced his retirement in 2014.

“I don’t want to appear in another program or climb another mountain,” she said. “I want to sit in a sunny field and admire the talented women – and OK, some men too – who will be my successors.”