- Connie Chung recalled working with her friend Barbara Walters at ABC News, emphasizing that Walters “deserved her queendom”
- Chung, 78, shared her career stories while receiving the Silurians Press Club’s 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award on April 23
- Chung also remembered how competitive ABC News was with Walters and Diane Sawyer “battling each other” for the spotlight
Before broadcast legends Connie Chung and Barbara Walters worked together at ABC News, they were well-known journalists at rival networks, with Chung anchoring shows for both NBC and CBS.
Chung, 78, remembered her late friend, who died at 93 in 2022, while speaking at an event in New York City on April 23, during which Chung received the Silurians Press Club’s 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award.
“I respected Barbara. When I was at ABC News, it was really scary for me because she was really, really strong and powerful,” recalled Chung, who moved to ABC News in 1997 after co-anchoring CBS Evening News.
“Prior to that, she was, ‘Oh, Connie, Connie.’ She mommed me, and she would write me notes and everything,” she continued. “But as soon as I was planted in the same network, it was really scary because she had power — and she wanted to hold onto her power. But I was okay with that.”
Chung described the environment at ABC News as competitive, with Walters and Diane Sawyer “battling each other” for the spotlight.
“Unfortunately, we as women were given such a tiny sliver of the pie that I found that the women were fighting each other for that tiny sliver,” Chung explained. “Because the men had the whole other piece of the pie, and they could swim in a greater body of work. But we had this tiny little sliver. So Barbara and Diane were battling each other as if they had to.”
“And I thought we would be a triumvirate who would be ganging up against Peter Jennings and [Ted] Koppel, but they didn’t see it that way, and I was just dodging bullets because Barbara and Diane were going, ‘Pew! Pew!’ at each other,” the former 20/20 anchor added.
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Despite this, Chung emphasized that Walters “deserved her queendom.”
“I followed in her footsteps in many ways. We had a lot in common. She was the first to co-anchor with men in the network newscast, which was the ABC News with Harry Reasoner,” Chung said of their similarities. “I was the first at CBS to co-anchor with Dan Rather. And both Harry and Dan despised us, absolutely despised our existence.”
“So we experienced the same thing. Barbara was the breadwinner in her family because her father’s nightclubs had tanked, and I was the breadwinner in my family because my father had retired in the 1970s, so we had that in common,” she continued. “We both adopted a child. We both married a nice Jewish boy. Actually, she married three.”
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Chung and husband, talk show host Maury Povich, adopted a son in 1995.
The couple went on to co-host Weekends with Maury and Connie at MSNBC in 2006, after Chung anchored Connie Chung Tonight on CNN.
At the Silurians Press Club event, Chung revealed that Povich pushed her to write her 2024 memoir, Connie: “Maury said, ‘You have a story to tell.’ And I said, ‘I don’t have a story to tell.’ And he said, ‘No, yes you do. You’re the Jackie Robinson of news.’ ”
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