Photo credit: Janet Donovan
Barbara Walters isn’t just any newswoman – she’s the newswoman that scares the hell out of her competitors. Take friend and CBS competitor Bob Schieffer who roasted Walters at a luncheon in her honor at The National Press Club, orchestrated by The American News Woman’s Club and sponsored by Clydes. She received the Excellence in Journalism Award and got the Red Carpet treatment.
Schieffer recalls getting scooped on a Gerald Ford story and seems he never got over it – it was a pivitol learning curve in his career.
Face the Nation’s Bob Schieffer
“She was always breaking through barriers and lines of all kinds,” he noted. “Police lines, security lines, – Barbara always found a way to get around them, under them, but most of the time just went right through them to get the story; and those of us who were competing against her to get the story had to be very much aware of that.”
“Let me just tell you this,” he continued. “The one time that maybe CBS did scoop Barbara was at the 1980 Republican convention – and that was the one where Ronald Reagan got the nomination. In the middle of this convention, there was this story going around that Gerald Ford might be on the ticket.
That’s all people were talking about. Well, low and behold, Walter Cronkite, – and I don’t know how he did it, if he captured him or if he took him there under arrest or what but – somehow got Gerald Ford to go up into the anchor booth.”
Alan Greenspan and Senator John Warner
“Barbara will remember this well. Cronkite got him up there and set him in the anchor chair in the booth and proceeded to interview him and Ford began to expound on if he did decide to take the second spot how he would kind of run it and so on and so forth. We found out later that Nancy Reagan was watching from her hotel all this time and I can tell you this wasn’t ever going to happen, believe me.”
Barbara Walters
“Anyway, the whole convention was transfixed. It came to a complete stop. Everybody was down on the floor, we were all looking up. I was the floor man – looking up at the anchor booth where people were turning on their TV’s trying to find out what Gerald Ford was telling Walter Cronkite.”
A similar thing happened to Hollywood on the Potomac at the luncheon. We were down on the floor looking up.
So shaky video or not – we’ll let Schieffer finish the yarn:
The event was Co-Hosted by ANWC Governor Ginny Daly and ANWC President Claire Swift; Program Chairs Sheilah Kast and Ashley Bernardi. Honored guests also included Ted Koppel, Howard Kurtz, Sally Quinn and Norah O’Donnell.
Ginny Daly, Barbara Walters and Claire Swift
Oh, and Ms. Walters (in good humor) wanted to thank everyone who didn’t tell her how much their grandmothers enjoy her.
