Barbara Walters’s credibility takes an unfortunate knock with the recent revelations that she tried to help further the journalistic career of one of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s close aides:
Says the Daily Telegraph:
Miss Jaafari, 22, was a close adviser to Mr Assad and was at his side as Syrian troops stepped up their campaign of killing and repression. She would speak to him several times a day, sometimes calling him “the Dude” in her adopted American accent, and was sometimes the only official in the room when he did interviews with Western journalists.
Miss Jaafari, whose father Bashar Jaafari has known Walters for around seven years, began dealing with the broadcaster late last year as ABC News lobbied for an interview with Mr Assad.
And worryingly:
Shortly afterwards, Walters emailed the young Syrian saying: “I wrote to Piers Morgan and his producer to say how terrific you are and attached your résumé.” She also asked whether Miss Jaafari was still planning on applying to Columbia University and offered to help.
A week later, Walters emailed Richard Wald, a professor at the Columbia School of Journalism and the father of Jonathan Wald, Morgan’s executive producer.
Walters described Miss Jaafari as “brilliant, beautiful, [and] speaks five languages” and asked whether there was “anything you can do to help?” Prof Wald replied that he would get the admissions office to “give her special attention”.
But despite this lapse in judgement, let us not forget the many high points in the career of Barbara Walters – none so resplendent as the time when she interviewed former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain and asked him what cabinet position he would be interested in holding in a future Republican administration:
“WHAT?”
Semi-Partisan Politics 