Barbara Walters, the pioneering television anchor and journalist, has died at the age of 93.
Walters “passed away peacefully in her home surrounded by loved ones,” her representative said in a statement released on Friday, December 30th. “She lived her life with no regrets. She was a trailblazer not only for female journalists, but for all women.”
A native of Boston, Walters was a trailblazer in the television industry. After getting her start as a writer and segment producer on The Today Show in the early 1960s, Walters worked her way up the ranks to become the first woman to host an American news program as co-anchor of Today starting in 1974. Two years later, she moved to ABC News and became the first woman to host an American evening news program as anchor of ABC Evening News.
Between 1979 and 2004, Walters served as co-host of ABC’s newsprogram 20/20 and established herself as one of television’s marquee interviewers. She spoke with every sitting US president from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama, as well as other prominent world leaders including Margaret Thatcher, Hugo Chavez, and Fidel Castro. Her 1999 interview with Monica Lewinsky was seen by 74 million people — the highest rating ever for a news program.
As an extension of her work on 20/20, Walters launched an annual special called Barbara Walters’ 10 Most Fascination People, where she interviewed prominent figures in entertainment, sports, politics, and pop culture. The special ran from 1993 to 2015.
Later in her career, Walters co-created and co-hosted the daytime panel show The View. She anchored The View, as well as served as a contributing correspondent for ABC News up until her retirement from television in 2015.
For her work, Walters won three Daytime Emmy Awards and one Primetime Emmy Award. She also was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1989, and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in 2000.
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