News icon Barbara Walters has died aged 93, ABC News reports.
The news station that Walters called home for years announced her death late Friday, paying tribute to the “dominant force in an industry once dominated by men.”
There were no immediate details about her cause of death.
Praise immediately began flooding social media for the pioneer, who became the first female news anchor on an evening news program, and went on to become one of the most popular. the most famous face on the news in a career spanning five decades.
“We were all influenced by Barbara Walters,” said David Muir of ABC News of “the extraordinary man, journalist, pioneer, legend.”
“She broke down the barriers behind the scenes and she did the news in front of the camera. She makes people say things they would never say to another journalist,” Muir said.
Walters began her career in the 1950s as a writer for CBS’s “The Morning Show,” and went on to become the first female co-host of NBC’s “Today” in 1974.
After joining ABC News in 1976 for “Evening News” and later becoming a co-host of “20/20,” her career flourished and she is known for a number of interviews. The most talked about questions about celebrities and politicians. She sat down with Richard Nixon and his wife, Monica Lewinsky, Fidel Castro and the King of Iran, just to name a few.
Walters, known for getting his subjects to open up and sometimes cry in interviews, revealed more about his own personal life in his 2008 memoir. Audition.
Of her career in television news, she said: “No one was more surprised than me. I’m not pretty, like many of the women on the show before me, [and] I have trouble pronouncing my r.”
