Barbara Walters, Legendary Interviewer, Dead At 93
Barbara Walters, trail-blazing journalist, legendary interviewer, and creator of The View, has passed away at the age of 93.
Legendary journalist, long considered to be the best interviewer on television, Barbara Walters is dead at the age of 93. Variety broke the news that the trail-blazing newscaster finally succumbed in her long battle against dementia and failing health, after having retired in 2014. While an exhaustive list of Walters accomplishments would take forever to read, during her long life Barbara Walters reached new heights for journalists, and female journalists in particular.
Born in Boston, Massachusetts on September 25th, 1929, Barbara Walters grew up as the daughter of a nightclub owner and wanted to become a teacher. After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College with a degree in English, she started working for the publicity director of WNBC New York. From those humble beginnings, the woman that one day get world leaders to open up on national television, slowly grew into her legendary career.
Starting work at Today for NBC in 1961 as a writer, Barbara Walters first major feature was joining First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy on a diplomatic mission to India and Pakistan. In 1974, Walters was promoted to co-host, but she was constantly being held back by men saying that she was to remain secondary and submissive. Just two years later, in a move that made national headlines and shattered a glass ceiling, Walters was offered $1 million to jump ship to ABC and co-host the evening news.
Starting in 1976, the Barbara Walters interview became a staple of life for the rich and powerful, including every sitting President from Eisenhower to Trump. World leaders that have sat down across from Walters include Russian Presidents Boris Yeltin and Vladimir Putin, Venezulean President Hugo Chavez, India Prime Minister Indira Ghandi, King Hussein of Jordan, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, and in what was an incredible feat, Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro. The interviews were such a hit for ABC, that the company continued to keep Walters on staff even when her pay rose to $12 million a year.
In addition to world leaders, Barbara Walters would sit with celebrities and other infamous figures, including Audrey Hepburn in 1981, who famously answered “What sort of tree would you be?” The highest-rated interview of Walters long career came in 1999, when she sat down with Monica Lewinsky, and asked the former White House intern “What will you tell your children about this matter?” After Lewinsky responded with “That Mommy made some mistakes,” Walters got the last word by saying “And that is the understatement of the century.”
While still hosting 20/20, Barbara Walters made another lasting contribution to the television landscape, when in 1997, she launched The View. The female-led show, both on camera and off, forever altered the landscape of daytime television with its focus on entertainment, politics, and the day to day lives of the hosts in equal measure. The show remains a force in entertainment, years after Walters retired in 2014, having amassed multiple awards to add to the journalist’s historic record of lifetime achievements.
Barbara Walters is dead, and the world of journalism is a little worse off. While she lived as a recluse for the past six years, privately battling dementia, there is no way to overstate how important her contributions to network news were over the past 60 years. There will never be another journalist of the caliber of Barbara Walters, no one will ever match her longevity, and the world is better off for the barriers she broke down along the way.
