Barbara Walters

Reaction poured in from around the world to the death of TV news pioneer and “The View” creator Barbara Walters.

She paved the way for so many — we learned from her — and remain in awe of her to this day. She was always prepared. She cared about the truth and she made us care too. She left the world the better for it. — Star Jones, an original co-host on "The View" She died Friday at her home in

She was the first woman to become a TV news superstar during a career remarkable for its duration and variety.

A side venture and unexpected hit, Ms Walters considered The View the “dessert” of her career. Late in her career, in 1997, she gave infotainment a new twist with The View, a live ABC weekday show with an all-female panel for whom any topic was on the table and who welcomed guests ranging from world leaders to teen idols. But she was a natural on camera, especially when plying notables with questions. She was placed at the forefront of the trend in broadcast journalism that made stars of TV reporters and brought news programmes into the race for higher ratings. “I always thought I’d be a writer for television. Ms Walters made headlines in 1976 as the first female network news anchor, with an unprecedented 1 million dollar (£830,000) salary that drew gasps.

The American TV legend was famous for her hard hitting interview style and was known for interviewing the biggest names in entertainment over the course of ...

Her second husband was to a theatre producer named Lee Guber - tying-the-knot in 1963, and they divorced in 1976 - but the couple adopted a daughter named Jacqueline Dena Guber in1968. She then stepped out of the public eye and last gave a public appearance in 2016 and has been out of the spotlight since. She was respected and known for her hard hitting interviews where she would often ask direct, abrupt questions - and was revered for her technique which encouraged those in her hot seat to answer the hard questions. Barbara then moved network to work with ABC where she hosted a job on their Evening News show - and became the first woman to anchor a network news show. “She was a one of a kind reporter who landed many of the most important interviews of our time; from heads of state to the biggest celebrities and sports icons. ABC news announced that she had passed away on Friday - she was 93 at the time of her death - with a flood of tributes pouring out for the icon soon after her passing was revealed.

Over more than a half century, the driven celebrity journalist built one of the most remarkable careers in TV news. She was 93.

"She loved not only making serious news but she loved the lighter side. After being widely mocked for asking actress Katherine Hepburn what kind of tree she would want to be, Walters defended herself by noting it was Hepburn who made the comparison. She was the first million dollars a year network anchor. "I think the idea of a woman, and particularly a woman who had already done not only done news, but fashion, and also, so called back then, women's issues, I think he found deeply offensive to him." That impression was the price of success. [She] knew that people were interested in these things and she never felt that she should look down on them for that." In 1974, she became the show's first female co-host. in Libya of Moammar Gadhafi killed," Walters said during the interview. Barbara Walters was born on September 25, 1929, just a month before the Wall Street crash that kicked off the Great Depression. [interview was the first Assad gave to an American journalist ](http://abcnews.go.com/International/transcript-abcs-barbara-walters-interview-syrian-president-bashar/story?id=15099152)since the uprising began in his country. In 1999, she scored the first big interview with Monica Lewinsky. And if you remember Walters as a journalist who blurred the lines between news and entertainment, there is some truth to that.

The first woman to front a US evening news programme, she interviewed everyone from presidents to pop stars.

News anchor Don Lemon tweeted: "She was obviously amazing on television but I selfishly loved spending time with her in person. She left the world the better for it. The world of journalism has lost a pillar of professionalism, courage, and integrity. She outworked, out-thought, and out-hustled her competitors. "She lived her life with no regrets. Barbara Walters was a trailblazer and a true pro.

Barbara Walters, who led the way as the first woman to become a TV news superstar during a career remarkable for its duration and variety, has died aged 93.

“I have to remember this on the bad days,” Ms Walters said quietly, “because this is the best.” “I never expected this!” Ms Walters said in 2004, taking measure of her success. She lived her life with no regrets.

"She lived her life with no regrets. She was a trailblazer not only for female journalists, but for all women"

A side venture and unexpected hit, Ms Walters considered The View the 'dessert' of her career. Ms Walters made headlines in 1976 as the first female network news anchor, with an unprecedented 1 million dollar - £830,000 - annual salary that drew gasps. Ms Walters, who led the way as the first woman to become a TV news superstar during a career remarkable for its duration and variety, died peacefully at home surrounded by loved ones. "Barbara Walters passed away peacefully in her home surrounded by loved ones. [The Greater Manchester town which was 'better than Bury' - but then got 'forgotten'](https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/greater-manchester-town-better-bury-25759786.amp) ["Pay the f****** money back": Family traumatised as thugs smash house in late night random attack](https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/my-dad-crying-time-family-25858985.amp) [Pub where bouncer 'flying kicked' man and another was stabbed is allowed to reopen](https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/pub-bouncer-flying-kicked-man-25858984.amp) [The lost Manchester bars and clubs that we loved back in the 00s](https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/12-lost-manchester-bars-clubs-25854319.amp) [The new restaurant with one of Greater Manchester's best views](https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/whats-on/food-drink-news/new-restaurant-one-greater-manchesters-25820103) She was placed at the forefront of the trend in broadcast journalism that made stars of TV reporters and brought news programmes into the race for higher ratings.

Walters was a broadcasting trailblazer who helped develop many modern TV templates. Here are some of the most memorable moments from her influential career.

[behind-the-scenes drama](https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/elisabeth-hasselbeck-quit-the-view-listen-fight-barbara-walters-audio-1203180312/) — [arguments](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc4SvJdfDZc), a revolving door of panelists, hosts [storming off](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVrR2j7uwjs) the air — has occasionally overshadowed the show itself. These high-profile [conversations](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuDnX63GSA8) spawned multiple spinoffs, including nearly 30 years of highly rated [Oscar-night programs](https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/04/arts/television/04walters.html), starting in 1981; the annual [“10 Most Fascinating People” specials](https://abcnews.go.com/2020/video/barbara-walters-fascinating-people-began-21272019), starting in 1993; and a series of [intermittent one-off interviews](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsL-QFAzRkw&app=desktop), such as with [Patrick Swayze](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsL-QFAzRkw&app=desktop). [former President Richard Nixon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZk2xuJN8kQ). In the late 1970s, she went to Cuba for an [extensive](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TC6xcQx4l7Y) [interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TC6xcQx4l7Y) with Fidel Castro (drawing the attention of the C.I.A. Trump](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji3qna9ZVgs) (when Trump was still a candidate). (Walters [often](https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/barbara-walters-retirement-2014-tv-trailblazer-reveals-top-19175060) [cited](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXh4_BUZwHI) this as the favorite of her interviews.) [move](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQHQ7nfwK4I) to [ABC](https://abcnews.go.com/US/video/barbara-walters-debuts-abc-news-1976-69034551) as the first female co-anchor of a nightly network newscast wasn’t universally applauded. Her “ABC Evening News” co-host, [Harry Reasoner](https://www.nytimes.com/1991/08/07/obituaries/harry-reasoner-68-newscaster-known-for-his-wry-wit-is-dead.html), [didn’t think so](https://www.nytimes.com/1977/02/13/archives/the-showdown-at-abc-news-behind-the-personality-conflict-between.html) and [rarely](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU5Fb0E0ZAk) [hid](https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/video/barbara-walters-risks-failures-23760251) his contempt on-camera. She flourished away from the studio as a [roving reporter and interviewer](https://www.nytimes.com/1978/04/20/archives/abc-news-shifting-center-to-capital-she-stays-in-new-york-deskborne.html). [Aline Saarinen](https://www.nytimes.com/1972/07/15/archives/aline-saarinen-art-critic-dies-at-58.html). [Henry Kissinger](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVNaQrJv4sU), [Prince Philip](https://twitter.com/todayshow/status/860210439136960515?lang=en), [Phyllis Schlafly](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjrP0NFHKAE)) and showbiz celebrities ( [Judy Garland](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHJujYMvY30), Barbra Streisand, [Bette Midler](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9jwFEu9mNQ)). [co-host](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeWjVLwV3Zk) until 1974, when she became the first woman to earn that title.

Disney Legend Barbara Walters, the pioneering television journalist who spent 38 years at ABC News, passed away this evening at her home in New York.

She also received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She became a co-host of the program without the official title in 1963, but in 1974, NBC formally designated her as the program’s first female co-host. After 25 years as host and chief correspondent of ABC News’ 20/20, Walters left the show in 2004, but she remained an active member of the news division and network for years thereafter. She made journalism history with the first joint interview with Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin in 1977. She not only interviewed the world’s most fascinating figures, but she became a part of their world. I had the pleasure of calling Barbara a colleague for more than three decades, but more importantly, I was able to call her a dear friend.

The US news icon and co-founder of The View was the first female anchor to make $1 million a year.

... We all recognize that had it not been for her, we would not have had a shoulder to stand on. We all now get to glide across that road that she literally laid brick by brick for us.” “And scrawled on the top of my memo, it said, ‘Not enough interest.’” [Bloomberg Businessweek](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-08-08/barbara-walters-on-the-art-of-the-interview) in August 2013. “It was so lonely, and I was failing. “Not women trying to outdo each other, but being able to have these different discussions and arguments and liking each other.” She faced persistent sexism early in her career during a time when men dominated the news industry. “For the first year of my television career, [I] actually created this façade of pretending to be Barbara Walters and trying to sit and talk and act like her. In a career that spanned more than five decades, Walters established herself as one of the most prominent and respected broadcasters on television. And I read about it in every paper and magazine.” “I remember sending a memo to the president, then, of NBC News saying, ‘Shouldn’t we do something on the women’s movement?’” she recalled in the Makers interview. “I remember sending a memo to the president, then, of NBC News saying, ‘Shouldn’t we do something on the women’s movement?’ And scrawled on the top of my memo, it said, ‘Not enough interest.’”

Journalist who made US television history as the first female co-anchor of a network evening news show.

She was creator of The View, which began in 1997, a popular chat-show covering politics and other issues. “From that time on I was more or less accepted as a member of the old boys’ club,” she wrote in her autobiography, Audition, published in 2009. The third, to a television executive, Merv Adelson, in 1981, ended in divorce in 1984. Later that year, she did the first joint interview with the leaders of Egypt and Israel, Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, a hugely symbolic moment in the Middle East. The casual sexism of the time was reflected in the headline: “Nylons in the Newsroom”. She got her start in television as a publicity assistant at an NBC affiliate in New York city, and made her first appearance on screen when she was producing a children’s programme, Ask the Camera. But viewers liked her and television executives, in turn, liked the ratings. Back in the US she became a writer in 1961 for NBC Today and three years later became a regular on screen as a reporter. Through a combination of talent and drive, Walters went on to make television history in 1974 as the first female co-host of NBC’s Today morning news show. It was one of the most watched news interviews in US television history. With that background, she chose theatre as her major at the Sarah Lawrence college in New York state. Her success opened the way for the generations of female television journalists who followed.

Babara Walters, who interviewed Michael Jackson and Cher through her long career as a news anchor and The View creator, died aged 93.

She went on to tie the knot with theatre producer Lee Guber in 1963 and divorced in 1976, eight years after adopting their baby daughter Jacqueline. She left the world the better for it. we met in the spring of 1998, in the midst of the starr investigation; i was 24. She never married again after their second divorce in 1992. She outworked, out-thought, and out-hustled her competitors. the last time we saw each other was for lunch a few years ago. Barbara Walters was a trailblazer and a true pro. She added: ‘We stayed in touch over the past 25 years. i remarked that this was the first time i’d ever been in serious trouble. and will certainly be my most memorable. Hugh Jackman tweeted on behalf of himself and his wife Deborra-Lee Furness: ‘Deb & I are so sad that Barbara Walters passed away. She lived a big life.

Pioneering US TV journalist and news anchor Barbara Walters has died at the age of 93, with Oprah among those paying tribute.

we met in the spring of 1998, in the midst of the starr investigation; i was 24. She was a trail blazer, wickedly funny, generous, open hearted and a good friend. “The last time we saw each other was for lunch a few years ago. Elsewhere, actor Hugh Jackman said: “She was a trailblazer, wickedly funny, generous, openhearted and a good friend. She also gave some of the most memorable dinner parties we’ve ever been to. She was indeed a Trailblazer.

Oprah Winfrey was among those to pay tribute to Barbara Walters, who is celebrated as the first woman to become a TV news superstar. | ITV National News.

She left the world the better for it. She outworked, out-thought, and out-hustled her competitors. “She lived her life with no regrets.

Her 1999 interview with Monica Lewinsky attracted 74 million viewers - still the highest rating for an American news programme.

Barbara Walters’s brief marriage to Robert Katz, a businessman, was annulled in 1958, and her 13-year second marriage to Lee Guber, a theatre producer, ended in divorce in 1976. As the end of the interview, Barbara Walters asked Miss Lewinsky what she would tell her children. With vague ambitions to act or to teach, she took a speedwriting course and worked briefly as a secretary at an advertising agency before joining NBC Television in New York as an assistant to the publicity director. But in 1995 Barbara Walters was effectively cut dead by Diana, Princess of Wales, with whom she had been due to have lunch ahead of an interview about her marital woes for ABC’s 20/20 programme. I wasn’t a beauty.” However, having landed her presenting role in 1964, alongside a series of male co-hosts, she persuaded many powerful men to appear on Today, as well as a host of showbusiness celebrities such as the notoriously shy Fred Astaire, Judy Garland and Ingrid Bergman. Barbara!” when he spotted her in a pack of reporters) and a controversial third, in November 1969, with the [Duke of Edinburgh](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/duke-of-edinburgh-obituary/#:~:text=The%20Duke%20of%20Edinburgh%20%E2%80%93%20obituary&text=His%20Royal%20Highness%20the%20Duke,extraordinary%20success%20of%20her%20reign.), conducted in the Presidential suite of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. Within 18 months ABC pulled their golden girl from the prime-time evening slot, with her bosses forced to admit that their million-dollar gamble to make Barbara Walters the most famous television woman in the world had failed. Her parents were Jewish, her British-born father, Louis Warmwater (the son of Russian refugees) having emigrated to the United States in 1900 as a boy from the East End of London. She graduated from the Sarah Lawrence College, New York, with a degree in English in 1954. When she asked the Conservative leader if she resented the soubriquet “the Iron Butterfly”, a puzzled Mrs Thatcher disarmed her by pointing out: “I’m actually called an Iron Lady — but aren’t you as well?” Her reign as queen bee of the small screen had begun in 1964 when she joined the early-morning Today show on the rival NBC network. Once a regular fixture on air, she earned a reputation for landing exclusive interviews with the great and good, starting with the usually uncommunicative Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, who poured his heart out to her.

Paul McCartney honored the memory of the late Barbara Walters in a sweet message on social media Saturday.

'Barbara was an amazing woman who more than held her own in the early days of male-dominated television and went on to become a worldwide celebrity known for her many perceptive interviews with stars from every walk of life. She left the world the better for it. 'Nancy and I are so saddened by the news of her dear cousin Barbara Walters’ passing.

The use of a Polity Score to measure how democratic a country is. · The importance of Factional Political Parties in provoking civil war. · The danger of Ethnic ...

I have long believed that the TV footage of the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia was a timely warning that helped our community to abandon violence in favour of the Good Friday Agreement. Sadly, in any country that has had a civil war, the risk of having another is greater. Dr Walters points out that countries can escape this ‘conflict trap’ by strengthening the quality of their governance, allowing all citizens to become involved in shaping their government. Again, writing about the break-up of Yugoslavia she writes that ‘For a society to fracture along identity lines, you need mouthpieces—people who are willing to make discriminatory appeals and pursue discriminatory policies in the name of a particular group’. She points out that the risk of violence is greater where a factions settle in concentrated geographic regions and people interact exclusively with their own. The risk of civil war is reduced when a country takes its time, evolving its political system gradually.

Because of Barbara Walters, women have much more power, money and influence – and a stronger voice, more career opportunities and more options in their ...

It was not just because she was on camera, but also because it was a form of self-expression, and reflected her confidence. She even created and launched a show just to do that: “The View.” Walters intentionally designed “The View” in 1997 as a panel of only women across the generations and the political spectrum. She did this when she became a mother, and altered her schedule to be there for her daughter, too. But what Walters really did was recognize that we are whole people with a range of quirks, choices, and dimensions, and that those quirks make us human to an audience – and make great television. Give a voice to the various dimensions of who you are – and who others are: Audiences embraced the personal questions Walters often asked her interviewees, even awkward ones – like asking Monica Lewinsky about showing her thong to the President of the United States, Bill Clinton. The stories of their clashes on air and off are news business legend, but what it showed was that she seized the opportunity and made it work for her, somehow. Really listen: She was known for her questions, but if you watch how Walters conducted her interviews, she is very present with her interviewees and listens closely to what they say and responds to it. Instead, she boldly, tenaciously and courageously embraced and pursued her intellect, her ambition and her formidable skills and sought to be among the top in her field. That strategic smile and light laugh came in handy when, for example, Reasoner insulted her in their first appearance together as co-anchors on the evening news in 1976 (he clearly did not want her there). It helped her a lot when she confronted Donald Trump in August, 1990 on his claims of success, for example. Every journalist interviews people, but Walters made it an art and pulled her audience in to their conversation in a way like no one else. Embrace who you are: Barbara Walters could have easily dumbed it down to get along better with the culture of the white-male dominated era of her early career, but she chose not to and stood firm.