Pioneering TV journalist on ABC, daughter of powerful politicians
NEW YORK — Cokie Roberts, the daughter of politicians and a pioneering journalist who chronicled Washington from Jimmy Carter to Donald Trump for NPR and ABC News, died Tuesday of complications from breast cancer. She was 75.
ABC broke into network programming to announce her death, and politicians including former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama offered sympathy.
Ms. Roberts devoted most of her attention to covering Congress, where her father Hale Boggs was a House majority leader who died in 1972 when his plane went missing over Alaska. Her mother, Lindy Boggs, took over his Louisiana congressional seat and served until 1990, later becoming ambassador to the Vatican.
Ms. Roberts co-anchored the ABC Sunday political show “This Week” with Sam Donaldson from 1996 to 2002. She was most proud professionally of a series of books about women in Washington. “We Are Our Mother’s Daughters” was about the changing roles and relationships of women. She also wrote two books with her husband, Steven Roberts, about marriage and an interfaith family.
“Cokie Roberts was a trailblazer who forever transformed the role of women in the newsroom and in our history books,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said.
Ms. Roberts, who earned her nickname because her brother couldn’t pronounce “Corinne,” grew up primarily in Bethesda, Maryland. She attended Wellesley College and met her future husband at a conference for student leaders.
“Journalism just kind of happened to me,” she said in a 2018 interview with the Television Academy. “It wasn’t anything I had planned to do.”
But she got her start at a newsletter, worked in local news and filed stories for CBS News from Greece when her husband was stationed there as a correspondent. She was bitten by the bug.
Settling back in Washington in the mid1970s, she was hired to cover Congress for National Public Radio. Again, it wasn’t in the game plan — politics felt like treading familiar ground in a way that didn’t interest her — but her background enabled her to understand how Congress worked in a way few outsiders could. And it gave her time to spend with her mother outside of Sunday dinner.
In those days it wasn’t unusual for a senator to lean in and put a hand on her knee.
“I would just sort of pick it up and put it on the table say, “I think this belongs to you,’” she recalled. “It’s remarkable how long that went on.”
Obama said Ms. Roberts was a role model for women at a time the journalism profession was still dominated by men, and was a constant over 40 years of a shifting media landscape and changing world.
His predecessor, former President George W. Bush, and his wife, Laura, called Ms. Roberts a talented, tough and fair reporter.
“We respected her drive and appreciated her humor,” the former president said. “She became a friend.”
While staying at NPR, she started working at PBS on “NewsHour” and in 1988 joined ABC News.
After leaving as “This Week” host, she settled into a role as analyst and commentator. She co-wrote a syndicated column with her husband, which got her into some hot water with NPR in 2016 when they called for “the rational wing” of the Republican Party to reject Trump as their presidential candidate.
“I never met her,” Trump told reporters Tuesday. “She never treated me nicely. But I would like to wish her family well. She was a professional and I respect professionals.”
Ms. Roberts, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002, appeared on “This Week” in August.
She was married to Steven Roberts for 53 years and they had two children, Lee and Rebecca, and six grandchildren.