Iconic reporter and creator of ABC‘s The View, Barbara Walters, has died. The television personality was 93 years old.
Walters’ death was announced Friday night by ABC News on the broadcast of World News Tonight With David Muir. No details of her death have been released at this time.
Throughout her career, Walters interviewed every sitting president and first lady between the Richard Nixon and Barack Obama administrations. Though she had retired by the time of their presidential administrations, Walters did previously interview both Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
Walters’ reporting was a major part of series like ABC’s 20/20, to which she contributed to often before her final on-air appearance in 2015. Walters is also responsible for redefining the daytime television landscape when she created The View in 1997, a series featuring a panel of women discussing current events and being candid about their differences of opinion.
The View cast in 1999 (Steve Fenn/ ©ABC / Courtesy: Everett Collection)
The journalist also memorably helmed ABC’s annual special Barbara Walters’ 10 Most Fascinating People in which she’d sit down for candid conversations with some of the most controversial and buzziest figures from the past year. Among those highlighted in the event programming were Hillary Clinton, Caitlyn Jenner, George R.R. Martin, Misty Copeland, Taylor Swift, and Elon Musk, to name a few.
Walters began her career by serving as a writer and segment producer on The Today Show in the 1960s. In 1983, she won her sole Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Informational Series The Barbara Walters Special, which she shared with Beth Polson. She was nominated on 11 other occasions in the years following the accolade. Additionally, she collected two Daytime Emmys for The View, one for her work on The Today Show, and a fourth categorized as a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Barbara Walters on TV Guide Magazine in 1977
Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1929, Walters received her formal education at the prestigious Sarah Lawrence College where she earned her Bachelor of Arts Degree in English. She leaves behind one daughter, Jacqueline Dena Guber, who was born in 1968 and adopted by Walters and her then-husband Lee Guber.
