Barbara Walters, trailblazing TV icon, dies at 93

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arbara Walters, the trailblazing television news broadcaster and longtime ABC News anchor and correspondent who shattered the glass ceiling and became a dominant force in an industry once dominated by men, has died. She was 93.

Walters joined ABC News in 1976, becoming the first female anchor on an evening news program. Three years later, she became a co-host of "20/20," and in 1997, she launched "The View."
Bog Iger, the CEO of Walt Disney Company which is the parent company of ABC News, praised Walters as someone who broke down barriers.

“Barbara was a true legend, a pioneer not just for women in journalism but for journalism itself. 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. 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. She will be missed by all of us at The Walt Disney Company, and we send our deepest condolences to her daughter, Jacqueline,” Iger said in a statement Friday.

In a career that spanned five decades, Walters won 12 Emmy awards, 11 of those while at ABC News.

She made her final appearance as a co-host of "The View" in 2014, but remained an executive producer of the show and continued to do some interviews and specials for ABC News.

Barbara Jill Walters was born in Boston on Sept. 25, 1929, to Dena and Louis "Lou" Walters. Her father worked in show business as a booking agent and nightclub producer, and discovered comedians Fred Allen and Jack Haley, who would go on to star as the Tin Man in the classic film "The Wizard of Oz."

Growing up around celebrities taught a young Barbara a lesson that she relied upon throughout her career.

"I would see them onstage looking one way and offstage often looking very different. I would hear my parents talk about them and know that even though those performers were very special people, they were also human beings with real-life problems," Walters said in a 1989 interview with the Television Academy of Arts & Sciences. "I can have respect and admiration for famous people, but I have never had a sense of fear or awe."

In her 2008 memoir "Audition," Walters revealed that she got her ambition to succeed from her older sister, Jacqueline, who was born developmentally disabled.

"Her condition also altered my life," Walters wrote. "I think I knew from a very early age that at some point Jackie would become my responsibility. That awareness was one of the main reasons I was driven to work so hard. But my feelings went beyond financial responsibility.

After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, in the 1950s, Walters found work as a publicist and television writer, before landing a spot as a writer on NBC's "Today" show in 1961. She would become the program's first female co-host in 1974, and won her first Emmy award the following year for Outstanding Talk Show Host.

In her memoir, Walters wrote that she had dark hair, a sallow complexion and was often told she was skinny. She said her parents' term of endearment for her was "Skinnymalinkydin."

In 1976, Walters found a new home on ABC's "Evening News," making history as the first female co-anchor of an evening news program.

In her inaugural broadcast on Oct. 4, 1976, with co-anchor Harry Reasoner, Walters scored an exclusive interview with Earl Butz, who had just resigned as President Gerald Ford's Secretary of Agriculture after it was revealed he told a racist joke. She also conducted a satellite interview with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat on his plans to end his country's fighting with Lebanon.

At ABC, her interviews were wide-ranging and her access to public figures, unparalleled; Walters crossed the Bay of Pigs with Fidel Castro and conducted the first joint interview with Sadat and Israel's Prime Minister Menachem Begin. She also developed a reputation for asking tough questions.

"I asked Vladimir Putin if he ever ordered anyone to be killed," she once recalled. "For the record, he said 'no.'"

Upon the death of Castro in 2016, Walters released a statement saying the dictator had called her two interviews with him "fiery debates."

During our times together, he made clear to me that he was an absolute dictator and that he was a staunch opponent of democracy," Walters said in her statement. "I told him that what we most profoundly disagreed on was the meaning of freedom."

There were lighter interviews, too. For years, she hosted an annual Oscars special, in which she interviewed Academy Award nominees and was known for making a number of them reveal deeply personal information and even cry. In 1994, she launched the "Most Fascinating People" special, which aired every December and afforded her the opportunity to chat with the year's top newsmakers.

In 1999, an estimated 74 million viewers tuned in to watch Walters interview Monica Lewinsky about the former White House intern's affair with then-President Bill Clinton. Toward the end of the interview, Walters asked Lewinsky, "What will you tell your children when you have them?" Lewinsky replied, "Mommy made a big mistake" to which Walters quipped, "And that is the understatement of the year."

Walters also interviewed every U.S. president and first lady from the Nixons to the Obamas. She interviewed President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump before they entered the White House.

With "The View," she created a forum for women of different backgrounds and views to come together and discuss the latest hot topics in the news, a format that has since been widely imitated by other networks. In a May 2019 New York Times Magazine cover story, "The View" was deemed "the most important political TV show in America."

Walters was married four times to three different men (she wed Merv Adelson, a television producer and real estate developer, twice) and adopted daughter Jacqueline Guber with second husband Lee Guber, a theater producer and owner. She named her daughter after her sister, writing in her memoir that she "wanted Jackie to feel that she, too, has a child, because I knew by this time she never would."

She was honored in 2001 with a wax portrait of her likeness at Madame Tussauds in New York City and in 2007 she was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Part of ABC News' Headquarters in New York was renamed "The Barbara Walters Building" in May 2014. During the ceremony, Walters accepted the honor, saying, "People ask me very often, 'what is your legacy?' and it's not the interviews with presidents, or heads of state, nor celebrities. If I have a legacy, and I've said this before and I mean it so sincerely, I hope that I played a small role in paving the way for so many of you fabulous women."

Barbara Walters is a prestigious name in the journalism industry, scoring exclusive interviews with several politicians and stars over the lifetime of her career. Beginning with her successful ABC career with a co-host position alongside Harry Reasoner.

Her career was already climbing in ranks, but ABC’s co-hosting role earned her the title of the first woman anchor. 

Many sexists have tried to downgrade Walters’ ability and skill in the industry, but it was Reasoner who tried (and failed) to ruin her incredibly successful career. As we all know, Walters isn’t one to back down when faced with any challenges.

ABC hired on reasoner in 1970 for the Evening News. Five years later, ABC hired Walters as their first female co-host alongside Reasoner, and he was vocally upset by it. Despite his distaste for Walters, her career was on the rise, and there was no stopping her. 

ABC News reports that among several notable interviews, Walters’ conducted interview exclusives with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Martha Stewart before and after her trial, President Fidel Castro, former Vice President Al Gore, President and Mrs. Bush, Robert Blake, Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat, Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem, and many, many more.

Reasoner and Walters’ strained professional relationship began when she was hired on to ABC as the first woman co-anchor, making a substantial amount of money to do so. Reasoner was outspoken about his unhappiness with her hire, and it caused a lot of friction between the two hosts — friction that could clearly be seen on air.

The problem was, Walters was a woman, and most people, Reasoner included, were sexist and rude about her success.

Walters endured significant backlash and pressure as the first woman to co-host in a male-dominated industry. In an interview with Archive of American Television, Walter explains that she took the time to learn as much as she could about the Yankees to get the stagehands and others to so much as talk to her.

“I would come in with all of this stuff about the Yankees, and at least the stagehands would talk to me. And I would make bets with Harry, and sometimes I would win,” she said. “It was the only kind of communication we had. Otherwise, the studio was cold, and I was frozen out.”

Nonetheless, Walters doesn’t harbor any ill will towards Reasoner. In fact, she explains that no one really understood what he was going through at the time, especially in his home life. “Harry wasn’t mean,” she says. “He was unhappy there. Unhappy with me. And as we learned later, going through many things in his private life that none of us knew about at the time.” 

It’s no secret that many men in the journalism industry wanted Walters out. She was constantly challenged and treated harshly by sexists, intimated by her rapidly growing success and achievements. Most notably being Reasoner, whose patronizing manner wasn’t even hidden while the camera was rolling. He tried to ruin Walters’ ultra-successful career — but ultimately failed.

In fact, even though the ratings for the show she co-anchored with him led to her having to step away from it, she still came out on top when ABC 20/20 ‘made a big decision’ to bet on Walters and let Reasoner go.

Before this decision, however, Biography.com notes that critics (including Reasoner) questioned Walters credibility and qualifications, insinuating “the move [was] a publicity stunt by ABC News to cash in on Walters’ ‘star status.'” And although research indicated viewers didn’t exclusively prefer male news anchors, “the ratings for the evening news program were disastrous, and the network released Walters within two years.”

Of course, we all know the rest is history after that. Walters is known for her prestigious journalism career that soon followed, high-stakes interviews, and incredible talent.

She paved the way for the many women journalists that would later make a name for themselves, and it’s all because she wouldn’t back down when sexists like Reasoner tried to ruin her success — just because she was a woman.