WASHINGTON: Barbara Walters, one of the most visible women on US television as the first female anchor on an American network evening news broadcast and one of TV’s most prominent interviewers, died on Friday at age 93, her longtime ABC News home said.

Walters, who created the popular ABC women’s talk show “The View” in 1997, died at her home in New York, Robert Iger, chief executive of ABC’s corporate parent, The Walt Disney Co. , said in a statement. The circumstances of her death were not given. “Barbara was a true legend, a pioneer not just for women in journalism but for journalism itself,” Iger wrote.

In a broadcast career spanning five decades, Walters interviewed an array of world leaders, including Cuba’s Fid­el Castro, Britain’s Mar­garet Thatcher, Libyan ruler Moa­mmar Qadhafi, Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein, Russ­ian presidents Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, and every US president and first lady since Richard and Pat Nixon.

Published in Dawn, january 1st, 2023