Legendary TV anchor Walters dies at age of 93

PIONEERING American news anchor Barbara Walters, once the highest-paid woman on television, has died. She was 93.

Walters, above, became the first woman to sign a milliondollar contract to co-host the evening news for broadcast giant ABC and amassed a fortune as creator of The View, an all-woman morning show.

She interviewed every US President from Nixon to Obama and described her encounter with Margaret Thatcher as ‘one of the few times I met a woman more formidable than myself’.

Walters pioneered the art of celebrity confessionals, reducing her subjects like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand and Mike Tyson to tears.

She asked White House intern Monica Lewinsky why she kept a stained blue dress after a sexual encounter with thenPresident Bill Clinton. And she grilled President Jimmy Carter about a rumour that he and his wife slept in separate beds.

Last night tributes poured in. Oprah Winfrey said: ‘Without Barbara Walters there wouldn’t have been me – nor any other woman you see on evening, morning and daily news.’

Tennis star Billie Jean King, who revealed she was gay in an interview with Walters, called her a trailblazer.

Walters made history in the 1960s by becoming the first female morning TV host on NBC’s Today show and signed a five-year deal to anchor

ABC’s evening news in 1976 that led to her being dubbed

‘the million dollar baby’.

Walters continued to co-host The View alongside Whoopi Goldberg until she was 84.

Three-times married and divorced, she is survived by her daughter, Jacqueline.