Pioneering journalist Barbara Walters dead at 93

Barbara Walters, the groundbreaking TV journalist who interviewed presidents from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama, died Friday. She was 93.

Walters’ death was announced by her longtime employer, ABC News. Her cause of death was not reported.

“Barbara was a true legend, a pioneer not just for women in journalism but for journalism itself,” Disney CEO Bob Iger said. “She was a one-of-a-kind reporter who landed many of the most important interviews of our time, from heads of state and leaders of regimes to the largest celebrities and sports icons.”

Walters was one of the first women to establish herself as a heavy-hitting broadcast journalist in an industry dominated by men.

Walters began her journalism career in 1951 after graduating from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, and worked for famed New York publicist Tex McCrary, who was also a pioneer TV talk show impresario and personality.

In 1961, she began working as a writer on NBC’s “Today.”

During her prolific career, she won 12 Emmy Awards, started “The View” from scratch in 1997 and interviewed every U.S. President from Nixon to Obama. She even interviewed Donald Trump and Joe Biden, though before either man became president.

“Barbara Walters was an American institution,” actress Lynda Carter wrote. “As the first female national news anchor, she opened the door to endless possibilities for so many girls who wanted to work in TV, myself included. Her impact cannot be overstated.”

Born Sept. 25, 1929, in Boston, Walters’ ambition to change the face of journalism came from her older sister, Jacqueline, according to her 2008 memoir “Audition.”

“Much of the need I had to prove myself, to achieve, to provide, to protect, can be traced to my feelings about Jackie,” she wrote of her sister, who was disabled. “But there must be something more, the ‘Something’ that makes one need to excel.”

Walters worked behind the scenes on “Today” for 13 years before she finally landed a permanent spot in front of the camera in 1974. When she did, she won an Emmy for outstanding talk show host.

Two years later, Walters became the first woman to co-anchor a regular evening news program at ABC’s “Evening News” alongside Harry Reasoner.

It was only up from there. In addition to all the U.S. Presidents she interviewed, Walters sat down with Fidel Castro, Moammar Gadhafi and several more world leaders. She once brokered a dual-interview with Israel’s Menachem Begin and Egypt’s Anwar Sadat.

“I asked Vladimir Putin if he ever ordered anyone to be killed,” she recalled. “For the record, he said ‘No.’”

Perhaps Walters’ most famous interview came in 1999 with Monica Lewinsky, in which she grilled Lewinsky over her affair with then-President Bill Clinton. ABC News estimated that 74 million people watched the broadcast.

It wasn’t all dictators and presidential scandals for Walters though. She hosted a yearly Oscars special and in 1994 started her “10 Most Fascinating People” special, in which she chronicled the biggest newsmakers of a given year. In 1994, Walters labeled Nelson Mandela the most fascinating person of the year. In 2015, the special’s final year, the distinction went to Caitlyn Jenner.

And of course, she spent 1997 to 2014 chatting on “The View.” Shows like it became ubiquitous, but in 1997 Walters went out on a limb to create a show that brought together women from different backgrounds to essentially sit and chat.

“I started ‘The View’ because I wanted a show with a different format,” she said. “News programs have a declarative tone. I wanted a sense of people talking together, so it felt more like a conversation.”

Walters was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2007. Along with the Emmys, she received numerous honors and awards for her six decades of work, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in 2000. Oprah Winfrey spoke at the ceremony.

“Had there not been Barbara Walters, surely all of the other women who have followed in her footsteps, including myself, could not stand where we stand and do what we do in this industry today,” Winfrey said.

Walters signed off of “The View” for the final time in 2014, but she didn’t fully retire until the end of 2015.

“I do not want to appear on another program or climb another mountain,” she said when leaving “The View.” “I want instead to sit on a sunny field and admire the very gifted women — and OK, some men too — who will be taking my place.”