Barbara Walters Research Paper

Barbara Jill Walters was born in Boston, Massachusetts on September 25 of 1929 to her parents Lou and Dena Walters. She was the middle of three children, with an older sister and a younger brother. Her younger brother Burton died before Barbara was even born, and her older sister Jaqueline was born with mental disabilities and passed in 1985. Though they didn’t really practice, Barbara grew up in a Jewish household. Her father was a broadway producer and the entertainment director of the Tropicana Resort and Casino. Because of her dad’s entrepreneurial adventures, she went to many different school along the east coast, but ended up graduating high school in New York City in 1947. She went to college in Bronxville, New York at Sarah
Lawrence
College, and she graduated with a Bachelors degree in English in 1951.
Barbara’s career started as a secretary/publicist for Tex McCrary, who was a journalist and public relations specialist who is said to invent the talk show genre for TV and Radio, at
NBC and worked “Redbook” magazine. She then was a writer for CBS’s “The Morning Show” in 1955. She joined NBC’s “The Today Show” in 1961, as a researcher and writer, and eventually she became the “Today Girl” regularly. A little over 10 years later, Barbara became the first ever female anchor of the “Today Show,” where she developed and wrote whatever she reported. Barbara also did many interviews with the biggest celebrities. She was also the co-host of the ABC Evening News. Her first huge career break was when she got herself the opportunity to travel with Jackie Kennedy to India and Pakistan. Because of the amazing job she did with the
First Lady of the United States, she was trusted with bigger responsibilities in the reporting world. She won her first Daytime Emmy for best talk show series in 1972, only escalating her career as an established journalist and gaining her more opportunities in the news world. She started doing her own specials, segments on “60 Minutes,” and interviewing the biggest celebrities, seemingly with ease. Barbara Walters was the first female reporter to ever make a million dollar salary, when she signed on with ABC to be a full-time anchor. She’s had many high profile interviews with world leaders, famous executives, and notable celebrities. She joined
“The View” in august of 1997 and retired from television in May 2013 after many hardworking, devoted years to journalism. In a statement of her retirement she said it was her time to watch other people shine.
She’s had three different husbands, each had about a five year gap in between. Barbara married Robert Henry Katz in 1955. He was a business executive and ex-Navy man, and they were only married for 11 months and their divorce was official in 1958. Lee Guber was her next husband who was a theatre owner in New York. They adopted a daughter together and named her Jaqueline Dena after Barbara’s older sister and mother. They were married for 13 years until
Barbara divorced him in 1976. Then, the CEO of Lorimar TV, Merv Adelson, came around and they married in 1981.
Three years later they divorced, but they then remarried in 1986 only to get divorced for a second time in 1992. Though she never married again, she’s been linked to some high profile lawyers and executives since her last divorce. She’s also become very open about the affairs she had during her marriage.
Because of her status on television, Barbara Walters was never allowed to express her exact political views. By the views she has expressed, though, she leans towards having more republican standards. She has interviewed many political figures and remained neutral through every interview while still asking hard hitting and thought provoking questions. She occasionally had light hearted questions, when talking about their families or pets.
Barbara paved the way for not only other female reporters and TV journalists but writers and researchers too. She was the first ever female news anchor, and also the first of her kind to make $1 million salary per year. Today, it seems that there are more female journalists, because
Barbara helped break through to the industry and show that it wasn’t only men who could do great things.
Some of her greatest interviews include:
Michael Jackson - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNkXLTw_yPw ; in this
interview,
Barbara sat down with him very soon after Princess Diana’s death, where he talked about the need for him to have more privacy. He said he's been hiding pretty much his entire life from the tabloids, and he felt comfortable confessing everything to Barbara.
Fidel Castro - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-WW63Lmai8 ; She sat down with the Cuban dictator for the second time and spoke about the relations between the US and Cuba. The interview starts very light hearted, but she then got down to the important questions.
Monica Lewinsky - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB2_HKREoVo ; Barbara interviewed
President Bill Clinton’s mistress, and she asked very hard questions that actually required Ms.
Lewinsky to think and give a reasonable explanation to. She allows Ms. Lewinsky to tell her side of the story, which seemed to be shocking to the