Barbara Walters, the groundbreaking broadcast journalist who was the first female co-anchor in evening news, has died at the age of 93.
As reported by ABC News, Walters died peacefully at her home in New York and leaves behind a legacy that is nearly unmatched in the world of journalism, television, and beyond.
Alongside making history as the first female co-anchor of an evening news program at ABC News on September 30, 1976, Walters also won 12 Emmy awards during her over five-decade career, conducted some of the biggest interviews in the history of television, was the first female co-host of the Today show, was the co-host of 20/20, was the co-creator and co-host of The View, and so much more.
Barbara Walters was born on September 25, 1929, in Boston, Massachusetts, and learned many of the skills she would excel at later in life thanks to her father working in show business as a booking agent and nightclub producer.
"I would see them onstage looking one way and offstage often looking very different. I would hear my parents talk about them and know that even though those performers were very special people, they were also human beings with real-life problems," Walters said in a 1989 interview with the Television Academy of Arts & Sciences. "I can have respect and admiration for famous people, but I have never had a sense of fear or awe."
.@ABC NEWS SPECIAL REPORT: Barbara Walters, trailblazing TV icon, has died at 93.
We take a look back at her astonishing life and legacy. https://t.co/G4PmqDe611 pic.twitter.com/GPi46jYwTc
— ABC News (@ABC) December 31, 2022
She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in the 1950s and began her career as a writer on NBC's Today show in 1961 before becoming the program's first female co-host in 1974. In 1975, she would go on to win her first Emmy award for Outstanding Talk Show Host.
Walters wouldn't stay for long as she broke one of the biggest barriers in television in 1976 when she became the first female co-anchor of an evening news program on ABC's Evening News alongside Harry Reasoner.
She spent most of her career at ABC and would interview everyone from Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin to Fidel Castro to Katharine Hepburn to Monica Lewinsky to U.S. presidents and everyone in between. She would never hold back with her questions and set such a high standard in her job that she became the highest-paid television journalist during part of her career by earning around $12 million per year.
On October 4, 1976, Barbara Walters made her debut on ABC News, co-anchoring "ABC Evening News” with Harry Reasoner. https://t.co/si1Q0HuMgW pic.twitter.com/6Eca0vDx6C
— ABC News (@ABC) December 31, 2022
She retired from The View in 2014, but would continue on to be an executive producer of the show and to appear in some specials and interviews for ABC News. In May 2014, a portion of ABC News' headquarters in New York was renamed to "The Barbara Walters Building," and she spoke at the occassion on how she views her own legacy.
"People ask me very often, 'what is your legacy?' and it's not the interviews with presidents, or heads of state, nor celebrities. If I have a legacy, and I've said this before and I mean it so sincerely, I hope that I played a small role in paving the way for so many of you fabulous women," Walters said.
Walters is survived by her daughter Jacqueline Dena Guber.
Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.