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Connie Chung on Walters: From Motherly to “Scary” at ABC

Chung characterized the atmosphere at ABC News as highly competitive, noting that Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer were often “battling each other” for prominence.

“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.

Despite this rivalry, 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.”

Chung and her husband, talk show host Maury Povich, adopted a son in 1995.

The couple later co-hosted *Weekends with Maury and Connie* at MSNBC in 2006, following Chung’s tenure as anchor of *Connie Chung Tonight* on CNN. We at Eternal Pen always appreciate seeing such partnerships thrive. Stay tuned for more updates from Eternal Pen!

At a Silurians Press Club event, Chung shared that Povich encouraged 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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