http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/28/showbiz/b ... rs-retiresReports: Barbara Walters set to retire
(CNN) -- Longtime ABC News personality Barbara Walters will retire from broadcasting next year after a half-century trailblazing career, according to several media reports Thursday.
ABC, where Walters has worked as a news anchor and talk show host since 1976, answered with "no comment" when CNN called about the reports quoting unnamed network sources in the New York Times and on Deadline.com.
Viewers see Walters, 83, mostly these days as co-host of ABC's daytime talker "The View," which she helped create in 1997.
The plan is for her retirement to be announced in May, giving a year for ABC to pay tribute to her before she stops working in May 2014, Deadline.com reported.
I'm sorry, but I never "got" the whole Babara Walters thing....
Like my befuddlement about Jerry Lewis, Buddy Hackett or Carol Channing, I just could never comprehend the reasons for her popularity....
I remember when she became the first female anchor on an evening network news broadcast, co-hosting with Harry Reasoner on ABC back in the mid-70's....
She was terrible....painful to watch....
As an interviewer, her style could best be described as cloying and insipid....
From a serious journalism standpoint, she is possibly the worst interviewer in the history of television...(she makes Larry King look like Edward R. Murrow)
She gets high praise for landing interviews with high profile news makers, but these accolades ignore the fact that the reason these folks were willing to be interviewed by her was because they knew she was a light weight who wouldn't ask tough specific questions or follow ups....They knew it would be a fluff piece interview, so they were more than happy to give them...
I suppose this shallow, touchy-feely interviewing "style" of hers didn't matter much when she was interviewing Hollywood glitterati, (who the hell cares what they have to say anyway) but it really detracted when she was sitting across from someone like Muammar Qaddafi....
I've never watched an episode of The View, but from the snippets I've seen from it on the news over the last several years, I don't see a whole lot to be impressed with there either....
(The one thing I will say for her is that she looks fantastic for a woman of 83....)
From the gushing accolades I've read in the papers and on various "news" sites attendant to the report of her retirement decision, I get the impression that much of this idol worship has to do with the fact that she was one of "the first" women to break through into national journalism... a lot of stuff about what an "inspiration" she was....
However if one fairly looks at the substance of her work, it seems to me that it's quite a stretch to even call what she's done "journalism".....
She was certainly a "trail blazer" in the genre of TV "gossip journalism"....
Lifetime , People Magazine and TMZ owe her a great debt....
Serious journalism, not so much....
