Barbara West (née Schmitt; born 1948) is an American television journalist and former news anchor for WFTV in Orlando, Florida.
West was principal assistant to Peter Jennings while he was anchor for ABC's World News Tonight in London.
[1] On October 23, 2008, West interviewed Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden with questions she personally wrote.
[6] Obama's Florida spokeswoman called West "both combative and woefully uninformed about simple facts.
Her performance was criticized as a "desperate audition for a primetime job at Fox News", considered a partisan stunt after she gave a soft interview to Republican candidate John McCain[10][11][12][13] and West was characterized as exhibiting conservative bias.