Barbara Walters: Only the Morning Shows Will Last

"When I die and my obituary is written, it's going to say 'She asked people what kind of a tree they wanted to be.'"

That's Barbara Walters, discussing "The Art of the Interview" this morning with 60 Minutes's Steve Kroft and The New Yorker's Ken Auletta at a breakfast sponsored by Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Communications. (S.I. Newhouse is the chairman of Condé Nast, which owns Portfolio, and The New Yorker is a sister title.) Walters was referring to an interview she once conducted with Katharine Hepburn for which she has often been teased. She insists her question was the right one: "If somebody says 'I'm like an old tree,' wouldn't you say 'What kind of a tree?' I rest my case.'"

Walters also talked about her awkward moments with Barack Obama and John McCain, getting made fun of by Gilda Radner on Saturday Night Live and whether she thinks Katie Couric was a victim of sexism. Kroft managed to get a few words in as well. Highlights below:

On getting "the get":

Walters:

I hate the whole idea of the big get, and I think the get has gotten worse. There are fewer big gets because there are so many programs. You do the morning show, and then you do either Regis or The View, and then you do Access Hollywood, CNN, Extra. It's endless.

Kroft:

Once you get into the position where you're in a media scrum, essentially everybody after the same person, then it becomes like landing an advertising account. You have to go in and do a whole song and dance, and it's a very distasteful part of the business.

I very often start by asking about childhood because it's something that seems safe but also in many cases is what opens them up and that's the most interesting part of the interview. I used to be accused of making people cry, and it was because I asked them about their childhood, they'd say something about their father and then they'd start to cry. It's always the father, not the mother.

Walters on how being on The View isn't always a blessing, part one:

I had an experience at a dinner in Washington, two weeks ago, the Alfalfa Club dinner. Senator McCain was there. He had been on The View and was not very happy. And when we walked out and I saw him I said, "Senator, so nice to see you. I hope you'll come on The View again." And he looked at me and said, "Not anytime soon."

Kroft on dumb questions:

This is a sad fact: Sometimes the dumbest questions get the best answers. Sam Donaldson made a career out of that, standing on rope lines, yelling things at Ronald Reagan.... You've gotta be willing as an interviewer to take chances and ask the dumb questions every now and then.

Walters on how The View isn't always a blessing, part two:

A couple of years ago, [Obama] was interviewed [at a public event] and I went up to him when the interview was over and said, "How nice to see you. I would just hope one day, Senator, that you would appear on The View." And he said, "I have." And I said, "I'm so sorry I wasn't there that day." And he said, "You were."

Walters, asked whether sexism had made it difficult for Katie Couric to succeed on CBS Evening News:

I think there were other things with Katie that had to do with the program, that were perhaps in the way. Not so today....A lot of the thing that affected Katie were very similar to the things that affected me. We had particular kinds of personalities. I went from the Today show to the network. She went from the Today show to the network. When you're on the Today show, you're much perkier, you're much tougher, there's much more personality. When you go on the network news you're expected to have a different kind of personality. I think people were not used to that.

Walters on the future of network news:

I think the only programs that will still be there as they are now in 10 years are the morning shows. Everything else you can TiVo and watch later or read about on the internet.

Walters on the proliferation of shouting-head news:

Today, in television, there are so many people doing interviews who express their opinions. It's very different. I grew up in a school, and so did you, where if you are a journalist you do not give your personal opinion....Today, not everybody, but outside of the network programs, people are giving their personal opinion.

We grew up in a school that said that the journalist...maintains his or her impartiality and asks the question. The new trends now in interviews are "You're a liar," "That's not true." It's much more personality-driven so that the person doing the questions have now become as important almost as the person they're interviewing.

Walters on being lampooned as "Baba Wawa":

I have learned to pronounce my 'r's' much better since Gilda Radner.