Support for NPR and the following message come from the Walton Family Foundation, working to create

access to opportunity for people and communities by tackling tough social and environmental problems.

More information is at walton family foundation.org. This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. We're looking

back at some of our favorite interviews of the year. Today,

pioneering TV journalist Connie Chung. When Chung appeared on television back in the 70s,

it was the first time many Americans had seen an Asian woman reporting the news and setting the

national conversation with her interviews with heads of state and controversial figures. For three decades,

Chung was a key player in every major news cycle, covering Capitol Hill, the White House, the

Pentagon, and the State Department. In 1991, she was the first journalist to get a sit-down

interview with Magic Johnson, just a month after he announced his HIV status.

Connie Chung has worked for ABC, both NBC and MSNBC, CNN and CBS, where she got her start and

later became the first woman to co-anchor the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, and the second woman

in the history of television news to anchor an evening

newscast. I spoke with Chung in September for her memoir, where she gives a behind-the-scenes look at

what it took for her to climb to the top of the male-dominated field of TV news.

Chung spills the tea on some well-known celebrities and politicians who hit on her,

and she doesn't shy away from naming names of people who crossed her

and sometimes made her job more difficult than it needed to be.

We also talk about one of the more challenging interviews with Donald Trump in 1990.

What Donald Trump does, of course, is make a lot of money and make sure everybody knows it.

A yacht, a mansion, a bigger mansion, an airline, two casinos, a bigger casino.

That is really incredible.

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