Television news reporter Barbara Walters died late last week, and many remembered the legendary news personality fondly. 710 WOR midday host Mark Simone was in the camp who had nice things to say about Walters, but believed the story being told about her wasn’t entirely accurate.
“She was a great woman, a great television figure. She created The View, and if you say ‘That’s the worst, most awful, disgusting, awful show’, it was fine until she left so give her credit for that. Once she left it turned into a cesspool of hatred, but when she was there it was fine,” Simone said before launching into his perceived myths about the venerable reporter.
“She was not much of an interviewer. You could watch those shows and see a great interview, but it wasn’t like Larry King where you go on live for an hour with no note in front of you and interview the guy. She would spend three weeks preparing, 20 people write questions for her. They’d tape eight hours, and then cut it down to eight minutes to get a great interview. She was a very hard worker, a great producer…but if you put her on live, she couldn’t have done it.”
Simone then took issue with the reaction from the public after she died, disputing that she was not a trailblazer.
“This was all you heard about when she died: she was this great pioneer who broke the glass ceiling. Absolutely not true. Not even close. Plenty of women did everything she did long before she did it…there were a million of these women who did what she did before she did it.”
The WOR host concluded by saying Walters was “great” and “tough” but was not the big breakthrough female news personality she made herself out to be.
