Barbara Walters – one of the most visible women on US television and one of TV’s most prominent interviewers – has died at the age of 93.
Walters, the first female anchor on an American network evening news broadcast who also created the popular ABC women’s talk show “The View” in 1997, died peacefully at her home in New York on Friday, her publicist Cindi Berger said in a statement.
“She lived her life with no regrets. She was a trailblazer not only for female journalists, but for all women,” she added.
Robert Iger, chief executive of ABC’s corporate parent, The Walt Disney Co, paid tribute to Walters as “a true legend, a pioneer not just for women in journalism but for journalism itself”.
In a broadcast career spanning five decades, Walters interviewed a myriad of world leaders including Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Britain’s Margaret Thatcher, Libyan ruler Moammar Gadhafi, Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein, Russian presidents Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, and every US president and first lady since Richard and Pat Nixon.
“I never thought I’d have this kind of a life,” she said in a 2004 Chicago Tribune interview. “I’ve met everyone in the world. I’ve probably met more people, more heads of state, more important people, even almost than any president, because they’ve only had eight years.”
Walters’ critics said she too often asked softball questions and she was long skewered for a 1981 interview in which she asked Hollywood actress Katharine Hepburn what kind of tree she would like to be.
Walters pointed out that she only asked because Hepburn had first compared herself to a tree.
But she knew how to ask tough questions, too.
“I asked Yeltsin if he drank too much, and I asked Putin if he killed anybody,” Walters told the New York Times in 2013. Both answered no.
Celebrity interviews were also an important part of Walters‘ repertoire, and for 29 years she hosted a pre-Oscars interview programme featuring Academy Award nominees. She also had an annual “most fascinating people” show but dropped it when she decided she was weary of celebrity interviews.
