American journalist Barbara Walters, the first woman to anchor a nightly newscast in the United States, has died at the age of 93, her employer, ABC, announced Friday.
This legend of the American audiovisual scene had said goodbye in 2014, with a “see you soon” in French, after more than 50 years of television. She was then 84 years old.
The American chain did not give the cause of death or specify where Barbara Walters died.
Until then, Barbara Walters had interviewed every US president from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama, foreign leaders like Saddam Hussein, Anouar el-Sadat and Fidel Castro, the Dalai Lama and other celebrities like Bette Davis and Angelina Jolie.
Pioneer in a profession reserved for men
She herself became a celebrity in the world of American news, especially on the daily show “The View” that she had created in 1997 on ABC.
The journalist had won 12 Emmy Awards, all but one while working at ABC, the channel added.
When she left in 2014, she said she was happy to have pioneered a profession long reserved for men. Hillary Clinton had come to pay her respects, as well as television presenter and producer Oprah Winfrey and about twenty television journalists.
In 1976, she was the first woman to anchor the “ABC Evening News” evening newscast, earning an unprecedented salary of $1 million a year.
From Vladimir Putin to Michael Jackson
Two years earlier, she had co-hosted a morning show on NBC. But it had been a “failure,” Barbara Walters recalled 40 years later. “My male co-host didn’t want a (female) partner and neither did the audience.”
Then he came out on top with his uniquely styled interviews, from Vladimir Putine to Michael Jackson, including Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi.
Her greatest pride was having contributed to the arrival of women journalists on television. “If I did anything to help with that, it’s my legacy,” she said in 2014.
“Without Barabara Walters, he wouldn’t have had me, like none of the women you see on the evening or morning news,” Oprah Winfrey posted on Instagram.
Source: BFM TV
