The Top Women Newshounds

NBC News

Andrea Mitchells understated, elegant style might lead you to think that shes spent her entire career broadcasting from inside Washington, D.C.s Beltway. But Mitchell, 64, NBCs Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent, doesnt hesitate to ask tough questions in an intimidating environment abroad. At a news conference in Khartoum, Sudan, she asked that countrys president why genocide was still continuing in Sudans Darfur region. Two guards prompted grabbed her and shoved her out of the room. Later, Mitchell said simply, It is our job to ask. As part of her reporting on the U.S. intelligence community, shes done stories from countries including Afghanistan, North Korea and Kosovo. And she hasnt done too badly on the domestic front, either: Her previous jobs, during the 1980s and 1990s, include Chief White House Correspondent and Chief Congressional Correspondent for NBC. In those spots she covered everything from the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings to the savings and loan bailout. In short, if you want to know the real story about anything thats happened in Washington since 1980, you could do worse than ask Andrea Mitchell.

ABC

At 81, the woman who was famously mocked on Saturday Night Live as Baba Wawa shows no sign of stopping. Even after her heart surgery earlier this year, she returned to The View as soon as she could, and looking as put-together as ever. Its that kind of persistence that has marked Walters career for nearly five decades. She became a reporter in the early 1960s on NBC, at a time when girls just didnt get a job that required getting interviews, editing them and broadcasting them. And over the years she had to work to land some really big interviews, including Fidel Castro, Margaret Thatcher and the Shah of Iran as well as entertainers like Michael Jackson and Katharine Hepburn. But one of the toughest spots in her career came, paradoxically, during the 1970s era of feminism, when she was hired as the first female co-host of an evening news broadcast. Her colleague, Harry Reasoner, didnt hide how he felt about sharing the anchor desk with a woman, and Walters didnt last long on the show. Although the failure was devastating I had to work my way back, she once said she went on to get the interviews that made her almost as famous as her subjects. These days, Walters is firmly in command of The View, and she doesnt seem willing to think about retiring. She will, however, give some advice to women who want to make their mark, no matter what business theyre in: Dont complain, dont whine, dont blame anybody. Just work as hard as you can.

NBC News

When Anne Thompson flew to Louisiana this spring to report on the BP oil spill, she didnt think shed be down there for the next three months, reporting daily. But thats what it took to cover the worst environmental disaster in the nations history. As the chief environmental correspondent for NBC since 2007, Thompson has reported on vital issues, including global warming and alternative energy. But with the BP oil spill, she covered not only its environmental consequences, but also its economic and psychological ramifications. That was familiar territory for her; Thompson had covered the financial consequences of Hurricane Katrina as well, in 2005, as NBCs chief financial correspondent. The way a lot of people down here react is shaped by Katrina, she told an interviewer. The scars of Katrina are evident and have not healed. It makes them weary. In 2006, Thompson was diagnosed with breast cancer; at first she kept her diagnosis private, she said in Coping with Cancer magazine, because my job is to get people to talk about themselves. I didnt want to be the story.

ABC

For someone who ultimately became the anchor of a network evening news broadcast (ABCs World News), Sawyer, 64, had an unusual start to her career: She worked on the team that arranged a transition between the Nixon and Ford administrations. And after Richard Nixon resigned in 1974, Sawyer went with him to his California home and helped him to write his memoirs and prepare for a series of television interviews with David Frost in 1977. After that, though, Sawyer left partisan politics behind, beginning a career with CBS and ABC that included investigative reports, documentaries, a stint on 60 Minutes and reports from North Korea and Afghanistan. With a record like that, its no surprise that shes aggressiveand has some hard-nosed wisdom to share. Whatever you want in life, she once said, other people are going to want it, too. Believe in yourself enough to accept the idea that you have an equal right to it.