According to US network ABC News, pioneering American television news queen Barbara Walters has passed away at the age of 93. On Friday night, the network made an announcement about her passing (local time). At ABC News, Walters worked for over 40 years. Her cause of death is yet unclear. Walters, a renowned interviewer, sat down with prominent newsmakers and spoke with every president and first lady of the United States starting with Richard Nixon.
Walters told The Associated Press in 2008, I don’t feel nervous when I’m interviewing, I have no dread’. Fidel Castro’s iconic Bay of Pigs interview in 1977 and her conversation with Monica Lewinsky in 1999 are two of her most well-known interviews. Lewinsky finally broke her silence during the eagerly awaited interview, which was shown to an estimated 74 million viewers in the US.
Over the course of her 50-year career, Walters also spoke with Michael Jackson, Katharine Hepburn, and Vladimir Putin of Russia. Walters questioned Putin about whether he had ever given a death order. She stated, ‘For the record, he said ‘no’. She was also regarded as a pioneering female journalist. When Walters joined NBC’s The Today Show as a co-anchor in 1974, she broke the glass ceiling by becoming the first woman to co-host a major network’s morning show.
She moved to ABC News in 1976, where she later made history as the first female nightly news anchor. In 1979, she began working as a correspondent for the ABC late-night show 20/20, leaving the position in 2004 after 25 years. The morning discussion programme The View, which she also produced and co-hosted, was one of her most cherished accomplishments.
She made one last appearance on the show in 2015. She told the Los Angeles Times when she retired, ‘I do not want to appear on another show or climb another mountain. Instead, I want to sit in a sunny field and enjoy the extraordinarily talented women – and, well, some guys too – who will be taking my place,’ she said.
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