Latest news with #Walters
Los Angeles Times
6 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Before social media, Barbara Walters said ‘Tell Me Everything.' And many did
There is no single figure in television history whose longevity and influence match Barbara Walters'. She became a star on NBC's 'Today' in the early 1960s, raising the stature of the morning franchise. She opened doors for women as a network anchor and turned newsmaker interviews into major television events — 74 million tuned into her 1999 sit-down with Monica Lewinsky. She created one of daytime TV's longest-running hits with 'The View,' which evolved into a major forum for the country's political discourse. 'The audience size that Barbara was able to capture and harness is unmatched in today's world,' said Jackie Jesko, director of the new documentary 'Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything,' debuting Monday on Hulu after its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this month. 'Everything she did sort of made a difference.' Jesko's feature — produced by Brian Grazer and Ron Howard's Imagine Documentaries and ABC News Studios — is the first in-depth look into Walters' storied career. The film also serves as a sweeping historical review of the decades-long dominance of network news that made figures such as Walters a gatekeeper of the culture, as Jesko describes her. Before the advent of social media and podcasts that allowed celebrities to control their messages, going through the X-ray machine of a Barbara Walters interview delivered exposure on a massive scale. David Sloan, a longtime ABC News producer who worked with Walters, recalls how the screen images of her specials flickered through the windows of Manhattan apartment towers. 'Tell Me Everything' came together not long after Walters died at the age of 93 in 2022. Sara Bernstein, president of Imagine Documentaries, approached Betsy West, executive producer and co-director of the Julia Child documentary 'Julia,' about taking on a Walters project. Sloan, who oversaw an Emmy-winning tribute after Walters' death, also wanted a deeper exploration into the impact of her career. West, also a former Walters colleague, and Sloan became executive producers on the film. 'Tell Me Everything' taps deeply into the ABC News archives, which contain thousands of hours of interviews Walters conducted over her 40 years at the network. Imagine not only gained access to program content but also outtakes that give parts of the film a cinema vérité-like look at Walters on the job. The newly unearthed footage provides some surreal moments, such as Walters — in a pink Chanel suit — exploring the damaged palace of Libya's deposed leader Moammar Kadafi. 'The archive gave us a the perfect canvas to relive her scenes and her moments,' Bernstein said. Walters' story also gives a guided tour of the obstacle-ridden path women faced in the early days of TV news when it was dominated by patriarchy and self-importance. Female reporters were relegated to writing soft features and kept at a distance from hard news. But Walters shattered those barriers through her grit and wits. She toiled as a writer in local TV and a failed CBS morning program before landing at NBC's 'Today' in 1961. ('They needed someone they could hire cheap,' she said.) Walters went from churning out copy for the program's 'Today Girl' to doing her own on-air segments, including a famously beguiling report on a Paris fashion show and a day-in-the-life look at being a Playboy bunny. More serious assignments came her way. The morning viewing audience loved Walters even though she didn't believe she was attractive enough to be on camera. Her career trajectory was slowed down only by male executives unwilling to embrace the idea that a woman could be the face of a network news operation. By 1971, Walters was the main attraction on 'Today' when she sat alongside host Frank McGee every morning. But she was denied equal status. A respected journalist with the demeanor of an undertaker, McGee insisted to management that he ask the first three questions of any hard news subject who appeared on 'Today' before Walters could have a chance. The restriction led to Walters going outside the NBC studios to conduct interviews where her subjects lived or worked. The approach not only gave her control of the conversations but added a level of intimacy that audiences were not getting elsewhere on television. Walters also had written into her contract that if McGee ever left 'Today,' she would be promoted to the title of co-host. NBC brass agreed to the provision, believing McGee was not going anywhere. But McGee was suffering from bone cancer, which he had kept secret. He died in 1974 and Walters was elevated to co-host, making her the first woman to lead a daily network news program. (Or as Katie Couric candidly puts it in the film, 'She got it literally over Frank McGee's dead body.') Walters made history again when she was poached by ABC News in 1976. She was given a record-high $1-million annual salary to be the first woman co-anchor of a network evening newscast, paired with Harry Reasoner, a crusty and unwelcoming veteran. Walters was mistreated by her colleague and roasted by critics and competitors such as CBS News commentator Eric Sevareid, who, with disgust in his voice, described her as 'a lady reading the news.' The evening news experiment with Reasoner was a short-lived disaster, but Walters found a supporter in Roone Arledge, the ABC Sports impresario who took over the news division and had an appreciation for showmanship. He recognized Walters' strengths and made her a roving correspondent. Walters scored a major coup in 1977 when she was the first TV journalist to speak jointly with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin during Sadat's historic visit to Jerusalem. 'She was a household name in the Mideast,' Sloan said. Over time, Walters would become known for her prime-time specials, where lengthy interviews with world leaders aired adjacent to conversations with movie stars. She could be a blunt questioner in both realms, asking Barbra Streisand why she chose not to get her nose fixed and former President Richard M. Nixon if he wished he had burned the White House tapes that undid his presidency ('I probably should have'). News purists clutched their pearls, but the audience welcomed it. 'She had a vision back then that celebrities are news,' said Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Bob Iger in the film. 'She was practicing the art of journalism when she was interviewing them.' The film explains how Walters developed an understanding of celebrities after growing up around her father's nightclub, the Latin Quarter, a hot spot in Boston. Sitting in the rafters above the floor show, she observed how audiences responded as well. Even though Walters' programs earned significant revenue for ABC News, she still had detractors, including the network's star anchor Peter Jennings. A clip from the network's political convention coverage in 1992 shows Jennings surreptitiously flipping his middle finger at her following an on-air exchange. But Walters was unstoppable, and as the 1980s and 1990s progressed, she became a mother confessor for perpetrators and victims of scandal. During a memorable jailhouse meeting with the Menendez brothers in which Eric describes himself and Lyle as 'normal kids,' a stunned Walters replies, 'Eric, you're a normal kid who murdered his parents!' As always, she was speaking for the person watching at home. 'She always wanted to ask the question that was percolating in the brain of someone who didn't have the opportunity or was too afraid to ask,' said Meredith Kaulfers, an executive vice president at Imagine Documentaries. Walters became a pioneer for women broadcasters out of necessity. While in her 20s, her father's nightclub business collapsed and she became the sole source of financial support for her family, which included her mentally disabled older sister. The terror of the insecurity she felt during that period never left. 'There was a survival instinct in her that drove her,' said Marcella Steingart, a producer on the film. 'Not necessarily on purpose, but in her wake, she opened doors for people.' 'Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything' is not a hagiography. The film explores her fraught relationship with her adopted daughter Jacqueline, who did not sit for an interview. Walters' unhealthy obsession with colleague and rival Diane Sawyer is covered, too, as is her willingness to use the social connections she developed through her career, and not just to land big interviews. Walters had a friendship with unsavory lawyer Roy Cohn, who pulled strings to make her father's tax problems go away. She carried on a secret romance in the 1970s with a married U.S. senator — Edward Brooke — while she was a fixture in national political coverage. While the film draws on interviews where Walters laments not being able to have both a successful career and a family life, Jesko sensed no regrets. 'I think if she could live her life over again, she wouldn't change anything,' Jesko said.
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Science
- The Guardian
Universities face a reckoning on ChatGPT cheats
I commend your reporting of the AI scandal in UK universities (Revealed: Thousands of UK university students caught cheating using AI, 15 June), but 'tip of the iceberg' is an understatement. While freedom of information requests inform about the universities that are catching AI cheating, the universities that are not doing so are the real problem. In 2023, a widely used assessment platform, Turnitin, released an AI indicator, reporting high reliability from huge-sample tests. However, many universities opted out of this indicator, without testing it. Noise about high 'false positives' circulated, but independent research has debunked these concerns (Weber-Wulff et al 2023; Walters 2023; Perkins et al, 2024). The real motivation may be that institutions relying on high-fee-paying international cohorts would rather not know; the motto is 'see no cheating, hear no cheating, lose no revenue'. The political economy of higher education is driving a scandal of unreliable degree-awarding and the deskilling of graduates on a mass scale. Institutions that are biting the bullet, like mine, will struggle with the costs of running rigorous assessments, but know the costs of not doing so will be far greater. If our pilots couldn't fly planes themselves or our surgeons didn't know our arses from our elbows, we'd be worried – but we surely want our lawyers, teachers, engineers, nurses, accountants, social workers etc to have real knowledge and skills too. A sector sea change is under way, with some institutions publicly adopting proper exams (maligned as old-fashioned, rote-learning, unrealistic etc) that test what students can actually do themselves. Institutions that are resistant to ripping off the plaster of convenient yet compromised assessments will, I'll wager, have to some day explain themselves to a public Craig ReevesBirkbeck, University of London Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
Time of India
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
French-Caribbean artist David Walters to perform in city
An exclusive concert by French musician David Walters, 'Trio' is scheduled to be held in Chandigarh as part of his Soul Tropical tour. He would be performing at Tagore Theatre on June 19 and has no entry charges. French-Caribbean musician David will bring this musical journey to city, blending Afro-Caribbean roots, soul, funk, and global grooves. This celebration of music, culture, and connection arrives as part of the international Fête de la Musique festival, observed every June across the world. Presented by the French Institute in India and the Alliance Française network in India, this tour has electrifying performances in other cities as well, including New Delhi, Chandigarh, Bhopal, Pune, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Kolkata, and Jaipur. Walters, known for his genre-defying sonic palette and powerful stage presence, brings a deep emotional resonance to his performances. His latest album, Soul Tropical, is both a personal homage to his Caribbean heritage and a universal ode to joy and resilience. It features acclaimed collaborations with artists like Mario Canonge, BallakéSissoko, Flavia Coelho, and Captain Planet, weaving together sounds from Martinique, Guadeloupe, Cuba, Brazil, and Africa — all filtered through the vibrant energy of Marseille, Paris, Sheffield, and Los Angeles. 'This isn't just music to listen to — it's music to feel, to move to, to heal with,' says Walters. 'Soul Tropical is about dancing through grief, reconnecting with family, and finding joy in shared rhythms.'
Ottawa Citizen
4 days ago
- Sport
- Ottawa Citizen
Pick a day of the week and Spitfires have you covered
Pick a day of the week and the Windsor Spitfires have you covered. Article content The Ontario Hockey League released its 2025-26 schedule and the Spitfires will play at least one home game on every day of the week over the team's 34-game home schedule for the regular season at the WFCU Centre. Article content Article content It starts with the home opener on Sept. 20, which is the first of five Saturday home games. As usual, the club plays the majority of its games on Thursdays with a dozen slated. Eight more are set for Sundays, three each for Fridays and Wednesdays along with two on Mondays and one Tuesday game. October and November are Windsor's busiest home months with seven games slated at the WFCU Centre each month. Article content Article content 'We want to continue what we did on home ice,' said Spitfires' head coach Greg Walters, whose team tied for the best regular-season home record with London last season at 29-4-0-1. 'We only lost four (in regulation) last season and we'd like to boost the road record.' Article content Article content Early on the Spitfires will be away from Windsor for six of the club's first nine games to start the season. Article content 'I like that,' Walters said. 'We'll get it going and I like that we get some time together on the bus.' Article content However, in a league that often leans to the weekend, Windsor will have its share of grinding stretches for the season. The club plays three games in in four days on 12 occasions with one stretch seeing the club playing six times in nine days. Article content By contrast, the club will face just two stretches where the team plays three games in three days and both will see the Spitfires sandwich two home games around a road match. Article content Article content 'We only have the two, so that's a good thing,' Walters said. 'The three-in-threes are tough on kids, especial the top-end guys. It tends to be a lot.' Article content Windsor will play its annual Thanksgiving Day game on Oct. 13 against the Oshawa Generals, who are owned by Windsor's Rocco Tullio. The team will meet the Saginaw Spirit for its annual New Year's Eve at home on Dec. 31 in a 2:05 p.m. game and also face the Spirit on Family Day in at 2:05 p.m. start on Feb. 16. The Erie Otters will be in for St. Patrick's Day on March 17 at 7:05 p.m., which is also the team's final regular-season game of the season.
New York Post
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Post
What ‘insecure' Barbara Walters was really like off-camera — and how she convinced Oprah Winfrey not to have kids
Barbara Walters was the first million-dollar woman on TV. But behind the scenes, the legendary interviewer and 'The View' founder was a difficult and calculating star who did not have 'the strongest moral compass,' according to her book editor Peter Ethers. 'She was obsessed with three things: She was obsessed with money, fame and power,' he reveals in a new documentary 'Tell Me Everything,' streaming June 23 on Hulu. 15 Barbara Walters worked tirelessly to become the first million-dollar woman on TV. Bettmann Archive 'A lot of the relationships she developed were career moves, and she was a pretty transactional person,' Ethers added of Walters, who passed away in 2022 at age 92. This included striking up a relationship with Donald Trump's mentor, the notorious lawyer Roy Cohn, who helped get her father's tax evasion charges dropped. Even though Cohn was gay, the pair considered getting married. 'Roy Cohn was famous, so he was worthwhile to Barbara,' Post columnist Cindy Adams, one of Walters' closest friends, says in the documentary. 'Barbara was famous so it was worthwhile for Roy. They were two people who loved PR. 'Did they really do anything together? I don't think so,' Adams says with a chuckle. The film unites colleagues and friends to speak about the woman who made it her business to talk to everyone from Taylor Swift to Fidel Castro, Richard Nixon to Monica Lewinsky — subjects who were not always happy with the turns Walters's interviews could take. 15 Walters and notorious lawyer Roy Cohn considered marraige — even though he was gay — a new documentary reveals. Penske Media via Getty Images 15 Oprah Winfrey reveals in 'Tell Me Everything' how Walters' life made her not want children. Harpo Productions But her fame came at a price, as she sacrificed much of her personal life for her career. 'I used to say to her all the time, 'I wish you could enjoy your success as much as the rest of us.' I don't think she ever did,' former 'Nightline' co-host Cynthia McFadden, a longtime friend of Walters, told The Post. 'Like many people who rise to the top, Barbara really had two competing drives,' McFadden added. 'She was unbelievably self confident. She had nerves of steel — she could not have done what she did otherwise. But she was also deeply insecure about what she should wear, where she should eat, where she should go. 15 Walters adopted Jackie with her former husband Lee Guber in 1968. 15 The pair had a fraught relationship through the years, but friends said they loved each other. Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images 'That combination kept her in a highly competitive state and sometimes she was not able to enjoy her success. That's, to me, so sad. I was certainly proud of her, but I don't think she ever felt she'd arrived.' Oprah Winfrey, who followed in Walters' footsteps by elevating the celebrity interview to an art form, reveals that watching Walters with her adopted daughter, Jackie, helped her decide not to have children. 'She had a charged, complex relationship with her daughter and I could see why. It's one of the reasons why I never had children,' Winfrey says in the film. 15 Walters started her TV career as a 'Today Girl' at NBC, where she was not allowed to ask one question until her male co-host had asked three. Bettmann Archive 'I remember her telling me once that 'There's nothing more fulfilling than having children' and 'You should really think about it,' Winfrey recalls. 'And I was like, 'OK, but I'm looking at you -— so, no!'' McFadden told People it was Walters's own relentless ambition that complicated the relationship with Jackie, now 56: 'She couldn't understand someone like Jackie, who wasn't racing to the top. They were just so dispositionally and physically unlike each other. It was a struggle.' The 2024 biography 'The Rulebreaker: The Life & Times of Barbara Walters,' by Susan Page, claimed that, as teenager, Jackie was 'drinking booze, popping Quaaludes and smoking pot' and that 'at thirteen, she would sneak out of the apartment in fishnet stockings and a miniskirt to party at Studio 54 and return home at four in the morning.' 15 Walters' second husband was theater impresario Lee Guber. 15 Walters and Merv Adelson, seen here in 1988, were married twice. Getty Images After Jackie ran away from home at 16, Walters hired a Green Beret soldier to track her down in New Mexico and deliver her to an 'emotional growth school' in Idaho. Jackie was 8 years old when Walters signed a deal worth $1 million a year to co-host ABC's evening news program with Harry Reasoner — who reportedly created a hostile work environment for her. The documentary includes footage that takes viewers back to Walters' first days on TV. In 1961, she joined NBC's 'Today' show as a 'Today Girl' after a short-lived stint in advertising which she quit after, Walter said, her boss became 'overly amorous.' 15 Walters interviewed Muammar el- Quaddafi from his tent in Tripoli, Libya, in 1989. í©ABC NEWS On 'Today,' she was only allowed to ask a question of a guest after her male co-host had asked three. She joined ABC's '20/20' in 1979 and stayed there for 25 years, scoring interviews with stars including the actor Christopher Reeve after he was paralyzed in a horseback-riding accident. In 1999, Walters's interview with Monica Lewinsky drew about 50 million viewers — an interview that, Winfrey unhappily admits in the film, Walters stole from her. She had an infamous feud with glamorous fellow ABC star Diane Sawyer, and the film reveals it was so bad that the two kept to different floors at work. 'Barbara felt that Diana was given advantages that she wasn't,' McFadden told The Post. 15 Walters scooped an interview with Monica Lewinsky from Oprah Winfrey, in 1999. ABC '[Sawyer] was more beautiful than [Walters] was, she was married to this fabulous man [director Mike Nichols]. [Walters] was always chasing after Diane … it was hard. 'I have never known any two women who worked any harder than those two.' McFadden said much of the angst came from Roone Arledge, who ran the news division by encouraging 'rough competition,' though the two women later became friendly. 'She was undermined and maligned by her male colleagues relentlessly,' David Sloan, Walters' longtime producer at ABC, told The Post. 15 Walters infamously quizzed a young Taylor Swift about her love life in 2014. ABC News But it instilled a 'fearlessness' that 'benefited her in the booking game,' Sloan added. 'When one of her competitors landed something that she wanted, she could be very determined — for example, calling [the interview subject] sometimes while that interview was actually being taped. 'Barbara's ambition to get the world's biggest, most famous names — for example, the Queen of England, the Pope, Jacqueline Kennedy — never came to pass, nor did they for anyone else. But her fierceness in the booking game got her the gets perhaps more than any competitor.' 'It's important that we don't denigrate her competitive side and determination,' McFadden noted. 'She never stopped. She picked up the phone and she wasn't waiting to be presented with her next interview.' 15 The interviewer had a rocky relationship with ABC News co-host Harry Reasoner that led to her leaving for '20/20.' Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images Walters went on to create ABC's daytime show 'The View' in 1997 at age 67. She was still as fierce as ever — in the documentary, Bravo's Andy Cohen recalls how she 'lunged' at him when he joked about her not having watched the movie 'American Hustle' because she was old. ''How dare you insult me on my own show,'' he recalls her saying. 'I got my ass handed to me by Barbara Walters.' Walters was married three times: to businessman Robert Henry Katz from 1955 to 1957; theater impresario Lee Guber (1963-1976), with whom she adopted Jackie; and TV producer Merv Adelson twice, from 1981 to 1984 and again from 1986 to 1992. 15 Walters with President Richard Nixon. 15 Cynthia McFadden said the person Walters was most nervous of was Katherine Hepburn. í©1991 American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. 'She liked being important to a man. She didn't have patience for somebody who was stupid,' Adams says in the film. 'She didn't love it if you were nobody, either — you had to be somebody.' Her other romances included Alan Greenspan, the former Chair of the Federal Reserve, and Virginia Senator John Warner, whom she later interviewed alongside his wife Elizabeth Taylor. The film also touches upon her affair with married Massachusetts Senator Ed Brooke. Of that relationship, Adams recalls, 'We all said 'Barbara, what are you doing? This is not quite right.' She said, 'Oh no, but he's so exciting and he's so great.'' 15 Walters founded 'The View' and is seen here with a plethora of the show's early co-hosts. Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images Walters eventually stopped the affair to prevent scandal, she later said. 'She was not a perfect person, but I had a tremendous amount of admiration for her,' McFadden said. As for her daughter, McFadden told The Post, 'They both did their best. They disappointed each other and they loved each other … I don't doubt for a second there was love between them.' Jackie does not appear in the film, and Imagine Entertainment exec Sara Bernstein told The Post, 'We know she is very private, but she didn't try to stop the film.' In the end, though, there is the axiom 'work doesn't love you back.' 'I think she felt that her greatest accomplishment — her peerless career — led to her greatest regret, because it often required her to sacrifice any semblance of a personal life. Or even a normal life outside of the glare and the fame,' Sloan said. 'In her apartment, she had a needlepoint pillow that was embroidered with this saying: 'Once upon a time, when there was time.' That was revealing, I thought,' he added. 'Barbara pretty much only had time for this storied career. Choosing one over the other was a sadness at the end of her life. She knew that.'
