Barbara Walters, iconic celebrity interviewer and US television journalist, dies at 93
- In a career spanning 50 years, Walters, who died at her home in New York, interviewed several world leaders, including Castro, Putin and every US president since Nixon
- Walters, the first female anchor on an American evening news broadcast, reached the top of her field despite being mocked for her lisp
Walters, who created the popular ABC women’s talk show The View in 1997, died at her home in New York, Robert Iger, chief executive of ABC’s corporate parent, the Walt Disney Co., said in a statement. The circumstances of her death were not given.
“Barbara was a true legend, a pioneer not just for women in journalism but for journalism itself,” Iger wrote.
In a broadcast career spanning five decades, Walters interviewed an array 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,” Walters 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.