Lessons From the Front Lines

Barbara Walters, ABC News and ' The View '
I don't believe that there is a gene for ambition. In my case, I had to make a living, but I'm not sure that alone produced the kind of drive or perseverance that I exhibited. When I look back now and see how hard I worked, I don't even recognize myself. When Beverly Sills, the great operatic star, retired from singing at the Metropolitan Opera, her husband gave her a ring with an inscription. Years later she gave the ring to me and said, "You should read this." The inscription on the ring read I DID THAT ALREADY. Maybe when one feels "I did that already," ambition and drive diminish. That's probably true in my case now.

When I first worked for the "Today" show at NBC, a very long time ago, I was a writer, but I was only allowed to write the so-called women's features. It sounds as if I'm talking about the 1890s. But I had a huge break when Hugh Downs, the then host of "Today," put me on the air. Sadly, the man who eventually replaced Hugh, a man named Frank McGee, didn't want me to participate in his "hard news" interviews. He insisted that he do them alone. Now there is a difference between whining and standing up for what you feel you must, and that was one of the times when I did. I protested loudly and strongly, and so the big compromise was that Frank McGee would ask the first three questions. I could come in on the fourth.

Later, in 1976, after 13 years on the "Today" show, I came to ABC as the first female co-anchor of a network news program. My partner was a man named Harry Reasoner. I was a terrible failure. Harry didn't want a partner. He made it very plain. You could feel the tension in the air. On top of this, I think the country did not want a female at that time delivering the news. And I'm not sure, when I look back, that I was the right woman. I think that my delivery, my appearance, maybe everything about me, worked against me. (There was the feeling that the man was more authoritative whether it was a male doctor, a male lawyer or a male anchor. And to some degree, that feeling hasn't changed. It has changed for doctors and lawyers, but not necessarily for female anchors on the network evening news.)

Then ABC appointed Roone Arledge to be the new head of the news department. To my great relief, Roone made the determination to send Harry Reasoner back to CBS and to keep me at ABC. He had faith in me. He began to send me all over the world as a kind of roving reporter. It was during this period that I did possibly the best interviews of my career. The only joint interview with Egypt's Anwar Sadat and Israel's Menachem Begin. Another with Cuba's Fidel Castro, and later with General Torrijos of Panama, at the time the canal was returned to that country. Finally in 1979 I joined ABC's newsmagazine "20/20" and worked happily doing hundreds of interviews for 25 years.

If I think about the downsides of interviewing, my idea of hell is when the interview is finished—and all the cameramen have left—somebody says, "Did you ask such-and-such?" and I think, "Oh! That's just what I should have asked." There's almost never an interview when I don't think, "How could I have missed asking that question?" It is torture.

On the other hand, I have been blessed with a fascinating career, one I never expected to have when I began as a writer on television. And if today, if a young woman comes up to me and says, "I'm in journalism because of you," I think that is my reward. I never had a mentor, and I am both grateful and so proud that I can be that for someone else.