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Barbara Walters, one of the most famous American broadcast journalists, has died at the age of 93 on Friday evening, according to ABC News, her former employer. A cause of death was not provided immediately.
Though a celebrity as much as anyone she covered, Walters pursued serious subjects as well. She was an unexpected pathbreaker. And If you remember Walters as a journalist who blurred the lines between news and entertainment, there is some truth to that.
She easily delivered lines like these to introduce Hollywood’s «it» couple for her special, «The 10 Most Fascinating People of 2006» saying, «Those lips, those eyes, that body. When Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie met on the set of ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith,’ it set off Hollywood’s hottest romance.»
Whether she was interviewing celebrities or the first couple, her questions were often direct.
In a Thanksgiving special with President Barack Obama and the first lady Michelle Obama, Walters asked the first lady, «You love him very much, don’t you?»
To which Mrs. Obama, replied, «I do,» and the president quipped, «She’s a little biased.»
Yet over the decades, Walters posed plenty of tougher questions. She had the only joint interview of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin amid their peace talks in 1977. In 1999, she scored the first big interview with Monica Lewinsky.
In December 2011, she asked Syria’s President Bashar al Assad about brutal reprisals against protesters.
«You have seen, I am certain, the pictures of Egypt from the President Mubarak in jail, pictures… in Libya of Moammar Gadhafi killed,» Walters said during the interview. «Are you afraid that you might be next?»
«No, I’m afraid that the people won’t support me, Syrian people,» Assad responded.
The interview was the first Assad gave to an American journalist since the uprising began in his country. It was not the first time Walters had interviewed a leader like Assad. She also spoke with Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gaddafi.
Barbara Walters was born on September 25, 1929, just a month before the Wall Street crash that kicked off the Great Depression.
