Veteran U.S. journalist Barbara Walters admitted she used tricks to get her subjects to answer the tough questions that made her TV interviews famous.
Walters' retires Friday from ABC's "20/20" newsmagazine, an event that will be marked with a retrospective of her 40 year career, the New York Daily News reported Monday.
"My questions, I had hoped, would be probing but not attacking. And I had certain tricks. I would say, 'What's the biggest misconception about you?' or, 'You know what the rumors are,'" Walters said.
"I will also frame them. I will say, 'I have to ask you a tough question.' So I've sort of given them 10 seconds to gulp. But when I look at (the interviews) I think, 'Why didn't they tell me, as Mrs. (Teresa) Heinz Kerry would say, to shove it?'" Walters said, referring to a response John Kerry's wife gave a probing reporter at the Democratic National Convention.
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