Pioneering television journalist Barbara Walters, who upended a male-dominated industry as the first woman to anchor an evening news show in the US, died on Friday at the age of 93, her long-time employer ABC said.
Walters interviewed a host of US presidents, and foreign leaders such as former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and former Cuban president Fidel Castro, as well as A-list celebrities in a hugely successful career that spanned five decades — becoming a touchstone of US culture in the process.
She died at her home in New York, said Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, ABC’s parent company.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“Barbara was a true legend, a pioneer not just for women in journalism but for journalism itself,” Iger wrote on Twitter.
Walters won 12 Emmy awards, all but one while at ABC, the network said.
She largely retired from television after signing off in 2014 from the daytime program The View, which she had launched in 1997.
Walters created a much-copied template for high-profile political and celebrity interviews, and blazed a trail for women in an industry run by white middle-aged men.
Her news career began in earnest in 1961 when she joined NBC’s breakfast news and entertainment show Today.
Walters became the first woman to anchor a US evening news program when she joined ABC Evening News in 1976, earning the then-unprecedented salary of US$1 million a year.
Three years later, she was named cohost of the news magazine program 20/20, beginning a run that would last more than two decades. By the time she left TV, Walters had interviewed every US president and first lady since Richard Nixon.
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