Veteran newswoman Cokie Roberts dies
Cokie Roberts, the pioneering broadcast journalist known to millions for her work with ABC News and National Public Radio, died Tuesday. She was 75.
ABC News, in a posting on its website Tuesday morning, said the cause was breast cancer, which was first diagnosed in 2002.
Roberts started her radio career at CBS, then in 1978 began working for NPR covering Capitol Hill. She joined ABC in 1988. Her three decades at the network included anchoring, with Sam Donaldson, the news program “This Week” from 1996 to 2002.
Roberts was both reporter and commentator during her career and was widely respected both by her fellow journalists and by those she covered. Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., recalled on Twitter a 2001 talk in which she “encouraged all of us, Republicans and Democrats, to always seek consensus where we could.”
Michelle and Barack Obama, in a statement, called Roberts “a trailblazing figure; a role model to young women at a time when the profession was still dominated by men; a constant over forty years of a shifting media landscape and changing world, informing voters about the issues of our time and mentoring young journalists every step of the way.”
If Roberts brought deep knowledge and keen insight to her work, that was in part because she was a child of politicians and first walked the halls of Congress as a young girl. Her father was Hale Boggs, a longtime Democratic representative from Louisiana who in the early 1970s was House majority leader. After he died in a plane crash in 1972, his wife and Roberts’ mother, Lindy Boggs, was elected to fill his seat. She served until 1991 and later became U.S. ambassador to the Holy See.
Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs was born Dec. 27, 1943, in New Orleans. She said that her brother, Tommy, invented her nickname because he couldn’t say “Corinne.”
She, her brother and her sister, Barbara, were immersed in political life, accompanying her father on campaign trips, attending ceremonial functions, and witnessing the discussions when other political leaders would come to dinner.
“Our parents did not have the children go away when the grown-ups came,” Roberts said. “In retrospect, I’ve sometimes wondered, ‘What did those people think to have all these children around all the time?’ But we were around, and it was great for us.”
Many of her eight books explored the role of women in shaping the country, including “We Are Our Mothers’ Daughters” (1998) and “Ladies of Liberty: The Women Who Shaped Our Nation” (2008).
Roberts attended Catholic schools in New Orleans and Bethesda, Maryland. In 1964, she graduated from Wellesley College with a degree in political science, and in 1966 she married Steven V. Roberts, then a correspondent for The New York Times. Journalism was a largely male world at the time.
“In 1966 I left an on-air anchor television job in Washington, D.C., to get married,” she told The Times in 1994. “My husband was at The New York Times. For eight months I job-hunted at various New York magazines and television stations, and wherever I went I was asked how many words I could type.”
She eventually became a radio correspondent for CBS, then in 1978 joined NPR. With Nina Totenberg and Linda Wertheimer, she began to change the lanscape of American journalism.