Pioneering US television journalist Barbara Walters dies at 93

Barbara Walters, one of the most visible women on US television as the first female anchor on an evening news broadcast and one of TV's most prominent interviewers, has died at age 93, her long-time ABC home network said on Friday.

Walters, who created the popular ABC women's talk show "The View" in 1997, died on Friday at her home in New York, Robert Iger, chief executive of ABC's corporate parent, the Walt Disney Co., said on Twitter.

In a broadcast career spanning five decades, Walters interviewed an array of world leaders, including Cuba's Fidel Castro, Britain's Margaret Thatcher, Libyan ruler Muammar Gadhafi, Saddam Hussein of Iraq and every US president and first lady since Richard and Pat Nixon.

She earned 12 Emmy awards, 11 of those while at ABC News, the network said.

Walter began her journalism career on NBC's "The Today Show" in the 1960s as a writer and segment producer. She made broadcast history as the first woman co-anchor on a US evening newscast, opposite Harry Reasoner.

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