Susan Page’s “The Rulebreaker” is a compelling, deliciously readable biography of a journalist who changed the face of TV news.
Newscaster Barbara Walters sits in her office as she prepares for her debut on ABC's evening news program in New York on Oct. 4, 1976. When Walter Cronkite learned in April 1976 that ABC had hired Barbara Walters as co-anchor of its nightly news broadcast, the CBS anchorman experienced what he called a “wave of nausea, the sickening sensation that perhaps we were all going under.”
Left unsaid, at least in public, was arguably the most significant source of their angst over ABC’s announcement: For the first time, a woman was about to breach their old boys’ anchor club. Still, the sexism that permeated their reaction, along with that of much of the public and press, was glaringly obvious. In countless newspaper headlines, this 47-year-old woman who had spent 20 years in the business was referred to as “a million-dollar baby.
But for the most celebrated woman in broadcast journalism, such triumphs were never enough. Her professional ascent, Page notes, brought Walters “fame and fortune but not peace.” For all her success,, had a profoundly disappointing personal life: three broken marriages and a contentious relationship with her only daughter. Her work was her solace, but even there, she never felt totally secure.
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