"Wait for those unguarded moments. Relax the mood and, like the child dropping off to sleep, the subject often reveals his truest self. "

The Queen of Idiot Gossip!

Barbara Walters was the first woman to anchor the nightly news on American network television. She was a host of the news shows 20/20 and is currently a host of the TV talk show The View, which she co-owns with the ABC Television Network.

Walters father was Louis Walters, a Jewish Immigrant form London, England -- he was the owner fo the famous New York nightclub "The Latin Quarter." He was also a Broadway producer. Walters is one two daughters. Her sister Jackie was developmentally disabled and died of ovarian cancer. Walters named her adopted daughter after Jackie.

Walter career began in 1961 when she took the job as a writer for NBC's The Today Show. With in a year, she was developing, writing, and editing all of her own reports and interviews. In 1974, she officially became the first female co-host at NBC. Later she became the the co-host of ABC's 20/20 with Hugh Downs. While at ABC, Walters appeared as a special commentator for presidential inaugurations and the coverage of 9/11. She left the program in 2004.

Since 1996, Walters has been a host of the daytime women's talk forum, The View. She owns half of the show (the other half is owned by the ABC Television Network) and is the co-executive producer. In the summer of 2006 she hired Rosie O'Donnell to replace Meredith Vieira as moderator of the show. O'Donnell has already distinguished herself with trenchant observations such as "radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam." She has also described Oprah Winfrey as being gay but unwilling to admit it.

Walters is known for "personality journalism," which means she provides big stars with highly scripted opportunities to promote their latest projects, usually by indulging in sentimental reminiscences or making tawdry confessions. In 1981, during an interview with Katharine Hepburn, Hepburn said that she would like to be a tree. Walters then posed the question "What kind of a tree?" This is Barbara Walters at her journalistic best.

On September 27, 2006, the ABC Television Network program 20/20 aired an interview conducted by Walters with Terri Irwin, the widow of Australian "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin. The main subject of the interview is a tape of Irwin's death on September 4, 2006, when he was killed by a stingray while filming a TV show about the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Terri Irwin tells Walters that the footage will never be made public, and Walters wonders why she can't see his violent end. This is an example of Walters' stock-in-trade, brazenly and pointlessly trading on the death of a famous person to enrich herself and her masters at ABC.

Walters has been married three times. Her first husband was business executive, Robert Henry Katz. After they divorced, she married theatrical producer Lee Guber on December 8, 1963. They adopted daughter Jacqueline Walters Guber Danforth. Walters and Guber divorced in 1972. Walters third husband was CEO of Lorimar Television, Merv Adelson, whom she married in 1986; they divorced in 1992.