Barbara Walters: Trailblazing US news anchor dies aged 93

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Barbara Walters, the intrepid interviewer, anchor and program host who blazed the way as the first woman to become a TV news superstar, has died. She was 93.

“She lived her life with no regrets. She was a trailblazer not only for female journalists, but for all women,” her publicist Cindi Berger also said in a statement, adding Walters died peacefully at her New York home.

During nearly four decades at ABC and before that at NBC, Walters’ exclusive interviews with rulers, royalty, and entertainers brought her celebrity status that ranked with theirs while placing her at the forefront of the trend that made stars of TV reporters.

Late in her career, she gave infotainment a new twist with “The View,” a live ABC weekday kaffeeklatsch with an all-female panel for whom any topic was on the table and who welcomed guests ranging from world leaders to teen idols. With that side venture and unexpected hit, Walters considered “The View” the “dessert” of her career.

A statement from the show said Walters created “The View” in 1997 “to champion women’s voices.”

“We’re proud to be part of her legacy,” the statement said.

Walters made headlines in 1976 as the first female network news anchor, with an unprecedented $1 million salary that drew gasps.

In May 2014, she taped her final episode of “The View” amid much ceremony to end a five-decade career in television (although she continued to make occasional TV appearances).

Walters graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1943 and eventually landed a “temporary,” behind-the-scenes assignment at “Today” in 1961. Shortly afterward, what was seen as the token woman’s slot among the staff’s eight writers opened. Walters got the job and began to make occasional on-air appearances with offbeat stories such as “A Day in the Life of a Nun” or the tribulations of a Playboy bunny. For the latter, she donned bunny ears and high heels to work at the Playboy Club.

As she appeared more frequently, she was spared the title of “‘Today’ Girl” that had been attached to her predecessors. But she had to pay her dues, sometimes sprinting between interviews to do dog food commercials.

She had the first interview with Rose Kennedy after the assassination of her son, Robert, and with Princess Grace of Monaco and President Richard Nixon. She traveled to India with Jacqueline Kennedy, to China with Nixon, and to Iran to cover the shah’s gala party.

By 1976, she had been granted the title of “Today” co-host and earned $700,000 a year. But when ABC signed her to a $5 million, five-year contract, she was branded the “million-dollar baby.”

By 2004, when she stepped down from “20/20,” she had logged more than 700 interviews, ranging from Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Moammar Gadhafi to Michael Jackson, Erik and Lyle Menendez, and Elton John. Her two-hour talk with Monica Lewinsky in 1999, timed to the former White House intern’s memoir about her affair with President Bill Clinton, drew more than 70 million viewers.

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