Walters Gives Network News Rave Review

Barbara Walters, special correspondent for ABC news, said last night that criticism of herself and network news is unfair.

"It hurt: I felt foolish: I was being made fun of and I didn't deserve it." Walters told a crowd of 225 at the Law School Forum in reference to the Saturday Night Live parody of her speech impediment.

Walters described network newsmen as "hard workers who care tremendously," and claimed that "there isn't a newspaper that is as unrelaxed" as the network news. "I think you can get more from a half hour of network news than any newspaper in the country," she added.

Although she criticized the networks for paying former President Gerald R. Ford and former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger '50 salaries for news for commentary, she defended her own acceptance of a multi-million dollar contract as a result of "supply and demand." Walters accepted no fee for last night's lecture, co-sponsored by the Law School Forum and Harvard Business School Women's Student Association.

Walters, herself a 1974 Time magazine leader of the future, considers her interviews with Cuba's Fidel Castro. Israeli Prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and the Shah of Iran her best. Her November 1977 interview with Begin and Sadat, the first time in modern history that leaders of the two countries had been interviewed together, was a "forecast of things to come," Walters said.