Christiane Amanpour
Christiane Amanpour (born January 12, 1958, London, England) is an English-born journalist who, as a correspondent for CNN, was one of the leading war reporters of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
She later hosted the ABC news program This Week (2010–11) and the PBS interview series Amanpour & Company (2018– ). Amanpour’s father, an Iranian airline executive, moved the family to Tehrān shortly after her birth. Politically connected and wealthy, the Amanpours led a privileged life in Iran. At age 11, Amanpour was sent back to England to attend the Holy Cross Convent School in Buckinghamshire. She stayed at Holy Cross until she was 16, when she went to the exclusive New Hall School, the oldest Roman Catholic girls’ school in the United Kingdom.
In January 1979, the Islamic revolution in Iran toppled the shah, forcing many of his followers to leave the country, the Amanpour family among them. Her father lost everything he had owned in Iran. Amanpour later credited her desire to be a journalist to this firsthand experience.
Amanpour subsequently moved to the United States. She attended the University of Rhode Island, graduating with a degree in journalism in 1983. She went to work for an NBC affiliate in Providence, Rhode Island, but in September 1983, she was hired at the fledgling CNN as an assistant for the international news desk. By 1986, she was working at CNN’s New York City bureau as a producer-correspondent. Amanpour received her big break in 1989 when she was promoted to a post in Frankfurt, West Germany.
She arrived there at an opportune time; the pro-democracy movement was sweeping Eastern Europe, and Amanpour quickly became CNN’s on-the-spot reporter. Amanpour gained distinction in Europe, but it was during the Persian Gulf War (1990–91) that she became a familiar face.
She covered the conflict from the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait to the eventual triumph of the U.S.-led coalition. After the war, she reported on the Kurdish uprising in northern Iraq. In 1992, Amanpour went to Bosnia and Herzegovina to cover the outbreak of violence that she thought would become “my generation’s war.
” Her reporting was credited with bringing the savage nature of that conflict to the attention of the world, although some criticized her for what they thought was her tendency to editorialize rather than report, claiming that she was clearly biased against the Serbs. While continuing to report from the field as CNN’s chief international correspondent, Amanpour occasionally contributed (1996–2005) to the CBS newsmagazine program 60 Minutes.
For CNN, she produced a series of programs that delved deeper into an issue than was possible on a nightly news show. Her documentaries included Where Have All the Parents Gone? (2006), which focused on Kenyan children who had been orphaned because of AIDS; In the Footsteps of bin Laden (2006); and The War Within (2007), a report on Islamic unrest in the United Kingdom. She also presented the six-hour series God’s Warriors (2007), which dealt with the defenders of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
From 2009 to 2010, Amanpour hosted the CNN interview series Amanpour. In 2010, Amanpour left CNN to join the news division at ABC, and she became host of ABC’s political affairs show This Week later that year. She stepped down from the program, however, in December 2011. In a special arrangement, she then resumed her role at CNN while continuing at ABC as its global affairs anchor.
Amanpour returned in 2012 on the CNN International channel, and in 2017, it also began airing on the Public Broadcasting Service as Amanpour on PBS. It was an interim replacement for the Charlie Rose show—which had been abruptly canceled amid allegations of sexual misconduct by Rose—and in 2018, the time slot was given to the newly created Amanpour & Company. The hour-long interview featured Amanpour as well as various correspondents; it also aired on CNN International. A manpour was the recipient of numerous honours, including an Edward R. Murrow Award (2002). In 200,7, she was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).
Katie Couric
Katie Couric (born January 7, 1957, Arlington, Virginia, U.S.) is an American broadcast journalist best known as the longtime cohost of NBC’s Today show and as the first solo female anchor of a major network (CBS) evening news program. The daughter of a writer and a journalist, Couric decided to pursue a career in broadcasting after graduating from the University of Virginia in 1979 with a degree in American studies. Couric briefly worked as a desk assistant at ABC News in Washington, D.C., before joining the Cable News Network (CNN) as an assignment editor for its Washington bureau. In the early 1980s, she moved to CNN’s Atlanta base, where she held several positions, including that of on-air political correspondent during the 1984 elections.
After CNN failed to offer her a full-time job as a reporter, however, Couric accepted a reporting position at WTVJ in Miami. In 1986, Couric returned to Washington and joined WRC, an NBC affiliate, where she won an Associated Press Award and her first of several Emmy Awards. Three years later, she became a deputy Pentagon correspondent for NBC, and her reporting during the U.S. invasion of Panama caught the attention of news executives.
In late 1989, she began filling in as a weekend anchor on NBC Nightly News, and in 1990, she started appearing on Today, a morning news and entertainment show. In 1991, Today coanchor Deborah Norville went on maternity leave, and Couric was named her substitute. At the time, Today was struggling in the ratings, but Couric’s cheerful personality brought viewers back. When Norville opted not to return to the show, Couric was named her replacement.
With her folksy manner and ability to cover diverse topics—from celebrity interviews to major news events such as the September 11 attacks—she was credited with making Today the most-watched morning program in the United States. In addition to her Today duties, Couric was also a contributing anchor for the television newsmagazine Dateline NBC. Her series on colon cancer, in which she underwent a colonoscopy on camera, earned her a George Foster Peabody Award in 2001. (Couric’s husband, Jay Monahan, died of colon cancer in 1998.) That same year, there was a heated bidding war for her services. Couric ultimately signed a five-year contract extension with NBC, believed to be worth $65 million, that made her one of the highest-paid news personalities. Katie Couric Katie Couric on the April 17, 2006, cover of Newsweek.
When her contract expired with NBC, Couric moved to competitor network CBS. In September 2006, she debuted as anchor of the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric; she was the first solo female anchor of such a program.
Although her first broadcast brought in double the usual number of viewers, the program subsequently struggled in the ratings. In addition to serving as anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News, Couric was also a correspondent for 60 Minutes and an anchor for CBS News prime-time specials. Couric left CBS in 2011 and subsequently became a special correspondent for ABC News. While in that position, she also hosted Katie, a nationally syndicated daytime talk show that debuted in 2012 and was canceled two years later. In 2014, Couric departed from ABC and became a “global anchor” for the Internet-based Yahoo! News.
She left that post in 2017, though she remained with Oath, which had become the parent company of Yahoo!, working on various projects. Her six-part documentary, America Inside Out with Katie Couric, in which she interviewed people in several cities about current issues, aired on National Geographic’s cable channel in 2018. Away from the television studio, Couric published The Best Advice I Ever Got:
Lessons from Extraordinary Lives (2011), a book of essays authored by prominent persons, including Jordan’s Queen Rania al-ʿAbdullah, American model and television personality Tyra Banks, and British writer Salman Rushdie. Couric later wrote the memoir Going There (2021).
Martha Gellhorn:
Martha Gellhorn (born November 8, 1908, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.—died February 15, 1998, London, England) was an American journalist and novelist who, as one of the first female war correspondents, candidly described ordinary people in times of unrest.
Though often remembered for her brief marriage to American author Ernest Hemingway, Gellhorn refused to be a “footnote” to his life; during a career that spanned some six decades, she covered a dozen wars and drew praise for her fictional work. Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway with Chinese officers in Chongqing, ChinaMartha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway with Chinese officers in Chongqing, ChinaMartha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway with Chinese officers in Chongqing, China, 1941. Gellhorn attended Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania but left in 1927 to begin a career as a writer. After contributing to several publications, including
The New Republic magazine, Gellhorn took a job with the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, touring the United States to report on the Great Depression. The Trouble I’ve Seen (1936) is an account of her experiences. In 1937, she accepted her first war assignment, covering the Spanish Civil War for Collier’s Weekly, and it was during this time that she began an affair with Hemingway.
He dedicated For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) to her, and they married in 1940 (divorced 1946). Gellhorn traveled the world to report on such events as the Nürnberg trials, the Arab-Israeli wars (1967), and the Vietnam War. In 1944, she impersonated a stretcher bearer to witness the D-Day landings during World War II.
Always distrustful of politicians, Gellhorn eloquently championed the cause of the oppressed. Her fictional work, noted for its lean prose, includes the novels A Stricken Field (1939) and The Lowest Trees Have Tops (1967) and a collection of novellas, The Weather in Africa (1978). Died: February 15, 1998, London, England.
Nellie Bly
Bly was born Elizabeth Jane Cochran on May 5, 1864, in Cochran’s Mills, Pennsylvania. The town was founded by her father, Michael Cochran, who provided for his family by working as a judge and landowner.
Nellie Bly was known for her pioneering journalism, including her 1887 exposé on the conditions of asylum patients at Blackwell’s Island in New York City and her report of her 72-day trip around the world. Journalist Nellie Bly began writing for the Pittsburgh Dispatch in 1885. Two years later, Bly moved to New York City and began working for the New York World. In conjunction with one of her first assignments for the World, she spent several days on Blackwell’s Island, posing as a mental patient for an exposé.
In 1889, the paper sent her on a trip around the world in a record-setting 72 days. The marriage was the second one for both Michael and Bly’s mother, Mary Jane, who wed after the deaths of their first spouses. Michael had 10 children with his first wife and five more with Mary Jane, who had no prior children . Bly suffered a tragic loss in 1870, at the age of six, when her father died suddenly. Amid their grief, Michael’s death presented a grave financial detriment to his family, as he left them without a will and, thus, no legal claim to his estate. By later enrolled at the Indiana Normal School, a small college in Indiana, Pennsylvania, where she studied to become a teacher. However, not long after beginning her courses there, financial constraints forced Bly to table her hopes for higher education. After leaving the school, she moved with her mother to the nearby city of Pittsburgh, where they ran a boarding house together. Bly’s future began to look brighter in the early 1880s, when, at the age of 18, she submitted a racy response to an editorial piece that had been published in the Pittsburgh Dispatch. In the piece, writer Erasmus Wilson (known to Dispatch readers as the “Quiet Observer,” or Q.O.) claimed that women were best served by conducting domestic duties and called the working woman “a monstrosity.”
Bly crafted a fiery rebuttal that grabbed the attention of the paper’s managing editor, George Madden, who, in turn, offered her a position. In 1885, Bly began working as a reporter for the Pittsburgh Dispatch at a weekly rate of $5.
Taking on the pen name by which she’s best known, after a Stephen Foster song, she sought to highlight the negative consequences of sexist ideologies and the importance of women’s rights issues.
She also became renowned for her investigative and undercover reporting, including posing as a sweatshop worker to expose poor working conditions faced by women. In 1887, Bly relocated to New York City and began working for the New York World, the publication that later became famously known for spearheading “yellow journalism.” One of Bly’s earliest assignments was to author a piece detailing the experiences endured by patients of the infamous mental institution on Blackwell’s Island (now Roosevelt Island) in New York City.
In an effort to accurately expose the conditions at the asylum, she pretended to be a mental patient to be committed to the facility, where she lived for 10 days. Bly’s exposé, published in the World soon after her return to reality, was a massive success.
The piece shed light on several disturbing conditions at the facility, including neglect and physical abuse, and, along with spawning her book on the subject, ultimately spurred a large-scale investigation of the institution. Led by New York Assistant District Attorney Vernon M. Davis, with Bly assisting, the asylum investigation resulted in significant changes in New York City’s Department of Public Charities and Corrections (later split into separate agencies).
These changes included a larger appropriation of funds for the care of mentally ill patients, additional physician appointments for stronger supervision of nurses and other healthcare workers, and regulations to prevent overcrowding and fire hazards at the city’s medical facilities. Bly followed her Blackwell’s exposé with similar investigative work, including editorials detailing the improper treatment of individuals in New York jails and factories, corruption in the state legislature, and other first-hand accounts of malfeasance.
She also interviewed and wrote pieces on several prominent figures of the time, including Emma Goldman and Susan B. Anthony. Bly went on to gain more fame in 1889, when she traveled around the world in an attempt to break the faux record of Phileas Fogg, the fictional title character of Jules Verne’s 1873 novel, Around the World in Eighty Days. Given the green light to try the feat by the New York World, Bly embarked on her journey from Hoboken, New Jersey, in November 1889, traveling first by ship and later also via horse, rickshaw, sampan, burro, and other vehicles.
She completed the trip in 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes, and 14 seconds—setting a real-world record, despite her fictional inspiration for the undertaking. (Bly’s record was beaten in 1890 by George Francis Train, who finished the trip in 67 days.)Bolstered by continuous coverage in the World, Bly earned international stardom for her months-long stunt, and her fame continued to grow after she safely returned to her native state and her record-setting achievement was announced.
Just two years after reviving her writing career, on January 27, 1922, Bly died from pneumonia in New York City. She was 57 years old.
Marie Colvin
Marie was born in Astoria, Queens, and raised in Oyster Bay, New York. Her parents, William and Rosemarie, were both high school teachers, and Marie was the oldest of five children. Shortly after her graduation from Yale in 1978, Marie started her career as editor of the newsletter for the Teamsters Local 237 in New York City.
She soon began writing as a staff reporter for United Press International in Trenton, covering local news. By 1984, UPI had named her Paris Bureau Chief, heading up the international news desk. This position provided Marie with her first opportunity to cover the Middle East, and she soon became fascinated by the region’s culture, politics, and conflicts. In 1986, she moved to the Sunday Times of London. For the next 26 years, she covered conflicts wherever they broke out, including East Timor, the Balkans, Chechnya, Kosovo, Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, and Somalia, but she was known especially for her reporting from the Middle East.
Marie was on hand to witness events in the Middle East from the Iran-Iraq War in the late 1980s, through two US wars with Iraq, and ultimately the 2011 revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria. Marie interviewed and met with heads of state and military leaders in many countries, but she most often wrote about the devastating impact of war on the civilian population.
“These are people who have no voice,” she said. “I feel I have a moral responsibility towards them, that it would be cowardly to ignore them. If journalists have a chance to save their lives, they should do so.” In 1999, in East Timor, Marie got that chance.
She was credited with saving the lives of 1,500 women and children who were trapped in a United Nations compound by Indonesian-backed forces. She refused to leave them when UN staff and journalists were evacuated, and continued to send news out of the compound, highlighting the plight of the refugees to the world. Embarrassed by Marie’s powerful reports, the U.N. reversed its decision to leave the innocent behind and evacuated them to safety. Marie put enormous physical and creative effort into her work. On many occasions, she faced extreme physical hardship to cover a story.
In Sri Lanka in 2001, she had walked for days through the jungle with local guides to evade government troops, when the group came under attack. Marie was struck by shrapnel from a rocket-propelled grenade, which resulted in the loss of her left eye. Despite suffering such grave injuries, Marie filed her story on time from her hospital bed and returned to the front line as soon as she recovered. She wore a black eye-patch from then on, which became her trademark and her badge of honor. In February 2012, Marie crossed into Syria, ignoring the Syrian government’s attempts to prevent foreign journalists from covering the Syrian civil war.
She made her way to the city of Homs, which the Syrian Army was bombarding. In an interview broadcast on CNN the night before her death, Marie described the merciless shelling and sniper attacks against civilians as the worst conflict she had ever experienced. “It’s a complete and utter lie; they’re only going after terrorists.
The Syrian Army is simply shelling a city of cold, starving civilians.” She was one of the few Western journalists inside Syria, and deeply believed that her presence provided a vital line of information to the outside world. In one of the final messages Marie sent to her editor before her death, she wrote, “Will keep trying to get out the information.”Marie was killed when the makeshift media center where she and several other journalists were staying was bombed by Syrian rocket fire.
The attack also killed acclaimed French photographer Rémi Ochlik and injured British photographer Paul Conroy, Syrian translator Wael al-Omar, and French journalist Edith Bouvier. Her death sparked a massive outpouring of tributes by heads of state, colleagues, admirers, and victims of war around the world.
In her hometown of Oyster Bay, the streets were draped in flags, and hundreds of people came to mourn her death and to recognize her life’s accomplishments. Marie herself best explained her reason for covering wars. “My job is to bear witness. I have never been interested in knowing what make of plane had just bombed a village.” She wrote about people suffering the effects of war so that others might understand the truth and take action to promote peace and compassion.
Robin Roberts
Serving her country is in Robin Roberts’ blood. Her mother was Lucimarian Tolliver Roberts, the first African American to lead Mississippi’s Board of Education. Her father, Lawrence Roberts, served in World War II as a pilot with the famed Tuskegee Airmen, the first African American military aviators.
Today, Robin Roberts serves her country and makes a difference as a journalist and newscaster. Born in Alabama, Robin grew up in Pass Christian, Mississippi, where she played basketball, tennis, and other sports. Her excellence in sports won her an athletic scholarship to Southeastern Louisiana University, where she became the star player for the women’s basketball team and graduated cum laude with a degree in communications. While still in college, she began working as a sports director for a local radio station.
From there, she moved to sports reporting and anchor positions for local television stations throughout the South. In 1990, Robin joined ESPN—the first female African American sports journalist for the network—and within five years, she was also a regular contributor on Good Morning America (GMA). In her 15 years at ESPN, she contributed to NFL PrimeTime and hosted SportsCenter and In the Game with Robin Roberts.“You want, as a journalist, to create a reaction that leads to action.
”In 2005, she joined GMA full-time as co-anchor. Since Robin joined the program, the show has won five Emmys® for Outstanding Morning Program and the 2017 People’s Choice Award® for Favorite Daytime TV Hosting Team. For ABC, Robin has also hosted In the Spotlight with Robin Roberts: All Access Nashville, as well as ABC’s red carpet coverage of the Academy Awards®. In addition to these hosting duties, she’s also created original broadcast and digital programming for the network through her production company, Rock’n Robin Productions. Robin shares that her colleague and friend (and fellow 2019 Disney Legend) Diane Sawyer taught her one of the most important lessons she has learned as a journalist:
“You want, as a journalist, to create a reaction that leads to action.”A breast cancer survivor, Robin was treated for myelodysplastic syndrome, a rare bone marrow disease, in 2012. When she revealed her condition to the public, the primary registry operated by the National Marrow Donor Program saw a 1,800 percent increase in donors. She chronicled her journey on GMA and earned a Peabody Award for the coverage. Through Disney’s Hyperion publishing division, she released her first book, From the Heart:
Seven Rules to Live By in 2007, a compilation of rules and insights to overcome tough obstacles and become successful. A year later, she produced an updated edition, which included her breast cancer journey, From the Heart: Eight Rules to Live By. In 2014, she released her memoir, the New York Times’ best-seller, Everybody’s Got Something, in which she shared more of her life lessons. “Being optimistic is like a muscle that gets stronger with use. Makes it easier when the tough times arrive.
You have to change the way you think to change the way you feel,” she says. Among Robin’s many awards are the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism, the National Association of Broadcasters’ Distinguished Service Award, membership in the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame and the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame, the Women’s Institute of Sport and Education Foundation’s Hall of Fame, and the Radio Television Digital News Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2001, Louisiana Public Broadcasting named her a “Louisiana Legend.” She was voted the “Most Trusted Person on Television” by a Reader’s Digest poll in 2013. Robin was named one of Glamour’s Women of the Year (2014), and in 2017, the Human Rights Campaign honored her with its Visibility Award.
Veronica Guerin
Veronica Guerin (1958 –1996) was an award-winning journalist for the Sunday Independent. In 1995, she received the Press Freedom Award for pursuing Dublin mobsters even when her life was in danger. One year later, she was shot dead in her car as she waited at a traffic light.
She had one son and was 37 years old. In over 30 years of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, no journalist had ever been killed. Her death struck a chord with the nation and triggered the largest criminal investigation ever seen in Ireland. Veronica was raised in Artane, north County Dublin. An avid sports fan, she played football and basketball for Ireland. Veronica studied accounting at Trinity and worked in PR before becoming an assistant to the politician Charlie Haughey.
In 1990, she joined the Sunday Business Post as a business writer and later worked as a news reporter for the Sunday Tribune. In 1994, she took a position as a reporter for the Sunday Independent, Ireland’s largest circulating paper, where she got a taste for investigative journalism chasing the story of a Catholic bishop who had fathered an illegitimate child. Veronica worked tirelessly and soon became known internationally for her hard-hitting exposés. Using her background in business, she investigated the financial dealings of Dublin’s shadiest characters. She doggedly covered organised crime and the menacing leaders who orchestrated it.
Though she only worked in the field for six years, she remains one of Ireland’s most well-known journalists thanks to her determination to reveal the capital’s rampant drug and gang culture. Veronica was admired for her dedication. She would often chase a story for weeks and would go straight to the criminals themselves instead of relying on police information. Ireland’s strict libel laws make it illegal for journalists to identify wrongdoers by name, so Veronica coined colourful pseudonyms for the criminals she reported on:
“The Monk’, ‘The Coach’, ‘The Penguin’, etc. In October 1994, one month after Veronica had written an article detailing the life of Dublin’s recently deceased drug lord ‘The General’, two bullets were fired through the window of her cottage. In January 1995, she answered her front door to a man who aimed a gun at her head. He lowered the gun and shot her in the thigh before escaping the scene.
She believed the incident was in retaliation for an article about the largest robbery in Irish history, in which she indicated a known con-man. Veronica left the hospital on crutches and went to visit every crime boss she knew, to let them know she was not intimidated. She said, “I vow that the eyes of justice, the eyes of this journalist, will not be shut again. No hand can deter me from my battle for the truth.” The Sunday Independent had a security system installed at her home, and the Gardaí Síochána provided a 24-hour escort, which she quickly cancelled. In September 1995, Veronica visited the ex-convict John Gilligan at his horse farm, questioning how he afforded his lavish lifestyle with no apparent job.
Gilligan, a known leader on the Dublin crime scene, ripped open her shirt searching for a hidden microphone and beat her. He later called her and threatened to rape and kill her son should she persist in publishing a story about him. Though frightened at the prospect of her son Cathal being harmed, she persisted in the search for the truth. In December 1995, she won the prestigious International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists.
On June 26th, 1996, Veronica stopped her red Opel at a traffic light near Clondalkin, Dublin, and made a call to a friend. Two men on a motorcycle pulled up, and one of them shot her five times. She died almost instantly, and the men sped off. On July 4th, the nation honoured her life in a moment’s silence with people on buses, trains, and in the street standing quietly paying their respects. The Gardaí wasted no time in launching a full criminal investigation. Most suspicions surrounding her death have centred around Gilligan, who boarded a plane to Amsterdam the day before the murder. He was arrested a few months later at a London Airport with a holdall of laundered drug money.
In November 1998, a man named Paul ‘Hippo’ Ward was charged with conspiracy to murder in the death of Veronica Guerin and sentenced to life in prison. In March 2002, the Court of Criminal Appeal overturned the murder conviction. Brian Meehan, accused of driving the motorcycle, also received life imprisonment, though he, too, was later acquitted; he remains in prison on drug charges.
The man believed to be responsible for firing the fatal shot, Patrick ‘Dutchy’ Holland, died in prison aged 70. Ironically, Veronica was scheduled to speak at a Freedom Forum conference in London titled ‘Dying to Tell a Story: Journalists at Risk’ two days after she was murdered. On May 2nd, 1997, her name and 36 others were added to the Freedom Forum Journalists Memorial. In the wake of her death, a crackdown on organised gang crime ensued, with some 150 arrests made.
The Criminal Assets Bureau was established in 1996 to carry out investigations regarding the proceeds of criminal activities. In 2000, Veronica was named in the International Press Institute’s 50 World Press Freedom Heroes. Her story was made into a Hollywood movie starring Cate Blanchett in 2003. Speaking about Veronica, Cate told a news conference, “’I think a spirit like Veronica’s only graces the planet once every 100 years or so. She was a phenomenal life force. It’s a gift, I think, that Veronica was such a complex, passionate, extraordinary human being first and foremost, and a journalist second.”
Barbara Walters
Barbara Walters (born September 25, 1929, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S)was a pioneering American journalist who was the first woman to co-host the Today show and the first woman to co-anchor an evening network news program. Walters was also known for her highly effective technique in television interviews with world-renowned figures . Walters was one of four children born to Dena (née Seletsky) Walters and Lou Walters.
The family’s finances fluctuated, though in 1942 her father opened the Latin Club in New York City, which was hugely profitable. Barbara Walters graduated in 1951 from Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York, and, after brief employment in an advertising agency, she became an assistant to the publicity director for New York City’s NBC-affiliated television station. There, she gained experience in writing and producing for television. Soon, she was hired as a news and public affairs producer and writer by the CBS television network.
In 1961, she became a writer for the popular NBC morning show Today and did occasional on-air feature stories. Walters was hired in 1964 as the “Today Girl,” a job that had traditionally involved little more than being attractive, making small talk, and reading commercials. She soon expanded that narrow role, making a place for herself among the Today show’s panel of commentators and newsreaders.
Her intelligence and camera presence, together with the solid journalistic work she did on her feature stories, made her one of the most popular personalities on the program, and in 1974, she was named cohost of Today with Hugh Downs, making her the first woman to host the show. The following year, she won an Emmy for her work on the show. In 197,6, Walters made headlines by signing a five-year contract with ABC that made her the first woman to co-anchor an evening network news program and, with a salary of $1 million per year, the highest-paid journalist at that time. In 1978, she left the program.
The following year, she joined the ABC newsmagazine show 20/20 as a correspondent, becoming cohost with Downs in 1984; she remained with the program until 2004. Walters was particularly known for her interviews with world notables. A tenacious pursuer of elusive figures in the news, she obtained exclusive interviews for her popular Barbara Walters Specials, which premiered in 1976. Her disarmingly direct questioning drew many subjects into frequently interesting and occasionally provocative moments of self-revelation. Walters described her effective interview style in How to Talk with Practically Anybody About Practically Anything (1970). In 1982 and 1983, she received Emmy Awards for best interviewer.
She was named to the Hall of Fame of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in 1990. In 1993, Walters introduced an annual program that featured her interviews with the newsmakers she deemed the “most fascinating” of the year; the series culminated in 2015. In 199,7, she began cohosting the daytime talk show The View, which she also helped create. The show featured a panel of other women who exchanged opinions and interviewed guests. Walters retired from The View and from regular television news broadcasting in 2014.
In her later years, Walters reportedly suffered from dementia. Walters was married to business executive Robert Henry Katz from 1955 to 1957. In 1963, she wed Lee Guber, a theater producer. They adopted a daughter, Jacqueline Dena Guber, before divorcing in 1976. (The child was named for Walter’s elder sister, who was intellectually disabled.) Five years later, she married Merv Adelson, a TV executive. They divorced in 1984 but remarried in 1986. The couple divorced again in 1992.
In her autobiography, Audition (2008), so named because she felt she had to prove herself over and over again, Walters reflected on both her public life and her private life. She was especially candid about her struggles to balance her career with motherhood. The documentary Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything was released in 2025. She died in 2022 at the age of 93.
Jane Mayer
Jane Mayer is a left-of-center investigative reporter and contributor to The New Yorker. She is an American national. Before joining that publication, Mayer worked as a White House correspondent and as a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. Mayer has covered issues including U.S. military policy, the Trump administration, and campaign finance. Mayer is most known for her hostile reporting targeting right-of-center advocacy and political donors, including Art Pope, Robert Mercer, and Charles and David Koch. 2 3 4 Mayer wrote the book Dark Money, which alleged that the Kochs and other right-of-center political donors created a network including nonprofit organizations, advocacy organizations, and think tanks to buy power and reshape the Republican Party in accordance with an anti-government agenda.
Though the book received widespread acclaim from left-of-center media outlets, it has been frequently criticized since its publication for presenting a left-wing, one-sided perspective on political spending.
In Dark Money, Mayer decried the “biggest known donors in 2014” for their political spending, while claiming that just “a few of the biggest spenders were now Democrats.” Scott Walter of the right-leaning Capital Research Center (CRC) countered that, according to Mayer’s own sources, 52 of the top 100 political donors were Democrats, outnumbering the Republican donors that Mayer alleged wielded improper influence over the political system. Other critics argued that the only difference between the network created by the Koch brothers to support libertarian ideals and those created by left-of-center megadonors “is that the Koch brothers are better at achieving their goals.
” Still others pointed out that Mayer had neglected to target high-profile left-of-center donors in her book, including Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, despite their being among the wealthiest people alive. Following Dark Money’s publication, Mayer continued to report for The New Yorker and became an outspoken critic of the Trump campaign and the former Trump administration. 9 In recent years, Mayer’s reporting has been the subject of several controversies.
Critics accused Mayer’s 2019 profile on disgraced U.S. Senator Al Franken (D-MN) of making light of the allegations of sexual harassment against him. Mayer has also been accused of misleading reporting. In 2018, while covering U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, Mayer reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had been allegedly unresponsive to witnesses seeking to testify in its probe into sexual misconduct claims against Justice Kavanaugh. Critics alleged that the “witnesses” Mayer referenced in the article had no new testimony to offer to the FBI, calling Mayer’s article “lazy high-school gossip-mongering.
” In August 2021, Mayer was again accused of misleading reporting when she alleged that Arizona State Representative Shawnna Bolick (R-Phoenix) had proposed a “radical reading of Article II of the Constitution.” Critics were quick to point out that Mayer misrepresented the interpretation of Article II as “radical,” arguing instead that the proposed interpretation was a well-established judicial fact. Mayer was born in New York City to Meredith Mayer, a painter and printmaker, and William Mayer, a composer. Mayer’s maternal grandfather was Allan Nevins, founder of American Heritage magazine and winner of two Pulitzer Prizes.
Mayer’s great-great-grandfather was Emanuel Lehman, who founded the investment bank Lehman Brothers. In 1977, Mayer graduated from Yale University, where she worked as a campus reporter for Time. After her time at Yale, Mayer attended Oxford University in England.
Katharine Graham
Katharine Graham (born June 16, 1917, New York, New York, U.S)was an American business executive who owned and published various news publications, most notably The Washington Post, which she transformed into one of the leading newspapers in the United States.
She was especially known for supporting the Post’s investigation into the Watergate scandal. The daughter of the publisher Eugene Meyer and the educator Agnes Meyer, Katharine Meyer attended Vassar College from 1934 to 1936 and then transferred to the University of Chicago, graduating in 1938.
After a year as a reporter for the San Francisco News, she joined the editorial staff of The Washington Post, which her father had bought in 1933. She also worked in the editorial and circulation departments of the Sunday Post. In 1940, she married Philip Graham, a law clerk.
From 1945, she gave up her career in favour of her family. In 194,6, her husband became publisher of the Post, and in 1948, the couple bought the voting stock of the corporation from her father. She remained apart from active involvement in the business as the Washington Post Company acquired the rival Times-Herald in 1954, Newsweek magazine in 1961, and several radio and television stations.
Katharine Graham at the premiere of All the President’s Men, Washington, D.C., 1976; the drama centres on the Watergate scandal. In September 1963, following her husband’s death by suicide, Graham assumed the presidency of the Washington Post Company. (From 1969 to 1979, she also held the title of publisher.) Under her leadership, The Washington Post became known for its aggressive investigative reporting, led by Ben Bradlee, whom Graham named executive editor in 1968.
With the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 and the newspaper’s unrelenting investigation of Watergate in 1972–74, the Post increased its circulation and became the most influential newspaper in the U.S. capital and one of the most powerful in the nation. In 1972, Graham took over as chief executive officer of the Washington Post Company, thereby becoming the first female CEO of a Fortune 500 company; she held the post until 1991.
In 1998, she received the Pulitzer Prize for biography for her autobiography, Personal History (1997). Died on July 17, 2001, in Boise, Idaho.