Barbara Walters, the grande dame of American television news, has been forced to apologise after it emerged that she had tried to use her influence to further the career of a former leading aide of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Emails seen by The Daily Telegraph show that Walters tried to help Sheherazad Jaafari, the daughter of Syria’s UN ambassador, secure a place at an Ivy League university and an internship with Piers Morgan’s CNN programme. When confronted with the emails, which were obtained by a Syrian opposition group, the 82-year-old ABC broadcaster admitted a conflict of interest and expressed “regret” for her actions. Jaafari, 22, was a close adviser to Assad and was at his side as Syrian troops stepped up their campaign of killing and repression. She would speak to him several times a day, sometimes calling him ‘the Dude’ and was sometimes the only official in the room when he did interviews with Western journalists. Jaafari, whose father Bashar Jaafari has known Walters for around seven years, began dealing with the broadcaster late last year as ABC News lobbied for an interview with Assad. Walters’s interview in December around the world as Assad denied he was responsible for the crackdown which had already resulted in thousands of deaths in Syria. The emails show that, after the interview, Jaafari and Walters stayed in close contact and that Walters emailed Piers Morgan and a professor at the Columbia School of Journalism. Jaafari did not ultimately get the internship nor the university place. Walters is currently the host of ‘The View’, a daytime talk show, but over a decades-long career has interviewed many of the biggest figures in American politics and culture. Her interview with Monica Lewinsky after her affair with Bill Clinton attracted a record 74 million viewers.
