Barbara Walters, who broke barriers for women as the first female co-anchor of the “Today” show and the first woman to host a television nightly news show, and who as a celebrity interviewer on her own, helped blurring the line between news and entertainment, died this Friday at the age of 93.
Her death was reported by ABC News, where she was a long-time host and creator of the talk show “The View.” No cause of death was released for her or where she died.
Walters spent more than 50 years in front of the cameras, and until he was 84, he continued to appear on “The View.”
In one-on-one interviews, she was best at probing, with gentle prodding, the emotional and private lives of movie stars, heads of state, and other high-profile personalities.
Walters first made her mark on NBC’s “Today” show, where she began appearing regularly on camera in 1964, she was officially named co-host a decade later.
Its success opened the doors for future television presenters like Jane Pauley, Katie Couric and Diane Sawyer.
Walters started at NBC as a writer in 1961, being a token piece of the “Today” writers’ room.
When she left NBC for ABC in 1976 to co-anchor the evening news with Harry Reasoner, she was known as “the million-dollar girl” because her five-year contract totaled $5 million.
Taking the co-anchor job made her not only the highest-profile female journalist in television history, but also the highest-paid news anchor, whether male or female, and her arrival was a sign of a cultural shift: the time when newscasters began to be seen less as Walter Cronkite-esque infallible authority figures, but more as celebrities.
Soon, he began contributing reporting to “20/20,” an ABC newsmagazine.
In 1984 she became the permanent co-anchor of the show along with Hugh Downs, her former “Today” colleague.
However, it was with her “Barbara Walters Specials” more than anything else that she became a star, enthroning her as an indefatigable chronicler of the rich, powerful and the infamous.
The specials, which began in 1976, made Walters as famous or nearly as famous as the people she interviewed.
Walters was a celebrity journalist who relished that role — riding a motorcycle with Sylvester Stallone, dancing the mambo with Patrick Swayze, or boating with Fidel Castro through the Bay of Pigs.
