The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Cokie Roberts, Emmy-winning journalist, dies at 75
Cokie Roberts, a daughter of politicians who went on to become a prominent journalist and political commentator, winning three Emmy Awards during a long career with NPR and ABC News, died Tuesday in Washington. She was 75.
Her death was announced in a family statement provided by ABC, which did not say precisely where she died.
Roberts was inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame and named a “living legend” by the Library of Congress in 2008. A rare woman in the newsroom when she began her career in the mid-1960s, she worked at CBS News, NPR and PBS before joining ABC News in 1988.
A veteran congressional reporter and consummate Washington insider, she co-anchored the Sunday political show “This Week” with Sam Donaldson from 1996 to 2002, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She also wrote eight books, including several bestsellers, and penned a political column while developing a reputation as a mentor and champion of young women in the media.
In part, her Washington expertise was a result of her upbringing: Her father, known as Hale Boggs, was Democratic majority leader in the U.S. House, and her mother, Lindy Boggs, launched her own congressional career after he died in a 1972 plane crash.
Roberts’ older brother, Thomas Boggs Jr., was a lobbyist and master dealmaker credited with helping to pioneer the “revolving door” system of hiring former members of Congress to lobbying positions; her sister, Barbara Boggs Sigmund, served as mayor of Princeton, New Jersey.
“I’m the only person in my original nuclear family who didn’t run for Congress,” Roberts told The Washington Post earlier this year. “I have always felt semiguilty about it,” she added. “But I’ve sort of assuaged my guilt by writing about it and feeling like I’m educating people about the government and how to be good voters and good citizens.”
She was born Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs on Dec. 27, 1943, and said her brother Tommy nicknamed her Cokie because he couldn’t pronounce Corinne.
Before joining “This Week” at ABC, Roberts was a political correspondent for the network’s “World News Tonight” program and filled in for Ted Koppel on “Nightline.”