[ad_1]
Cokie Roberts, who was inspired from her childhood in a powerful political family to embark on a career as a leading journalist in Washington for NPR and ABC News, bringing a hard and competent voice to the political arena Brutal at a time when few women national profiles in the information sector, died Tuesday in Washington. She was 75 years old.
ABC News, in a publication on its website, said the cause was breast cancer.
Roberts was known to millions of people for her reporting and commentary, easily playing on radio, television and on paper to explain the impact of global events and the complexity of political debates. And in books such as "Ladies of Freedom: The Women Who Made Our Nation" (2008) and "Women's Capital: The Civil War and Women of Washington, 1848-1868" (2015), she emphasized the often neglected role of women in history. , especially political history.
"Cokie Roberts has been a pioneer," Twitter House Speaker Pelosi told reporters, who has transformed the role of women in the newsroom and our storybooks by telling women's stories. unknown who built our country.
Roberts, who joined NPR in the late 1970s and ABC News in 1988, has a career that has served as an example to future generations of women journalists.
"I am proud to work for a news agency that has" founding mothers "whom we all admire," NPR journalist Danielle Kurtzleben said on Twitter. "God bless Cokie Roberts."
In a statement, former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama called Ms. Roberts "a model for young women at a time when the profession was still dominated by men; a constant over 40 years of a media landscape and a changing world, informing voters about the problems of our time and guiding young journalists every step of the way. "
And President Trump, speaking to Air Force One journalists en route from New Mexico to California, said about Roberts: "I have never met her. She never treated me nicely. But I would like to wish good luck to his family. She was a professional and I respect the professionals. I respect you very much, you guys. She was a real professional. Never treated me well, but I certainly respect her as a professional.
If Ms. Roberts was providing insightful insight into her work, it was partly because she was a child of politicians, one of the first to wander the halls of Congress as a girl. His father was Hale Boggs, a long-time Democratic representative from Louisiana who, in the early 1970s, led the majority in the House. After his death in a plane crash in 1972, his wife and mother, Lindy Boggs, were elected to occupy his seat. She served until 1991 and later became US ambassador to the Vatican.
Ms. Roberts' background inspired her with deep respect for the government institutions she covered, and she and her fellow journalists were not blameless about the government's problems. "We are quick to criticize and praise," she said in a keynote speech at Boston College in 1994.
"But," she said to the crowd, "it's also your fault." Voters, she said, must allow members of Congress to make difficult votes and "let that person live to fight another day".
In an oral history recorded in the House of Representatives in 2007 and 2008, she explained the impact of her childhood experiences on how she shaped her perspective on America.
"Because I spent time at the Capitol and especially in the House of Representatives, I became deeply attached to the American system," she said. "And as close and personally as I have seen and seen all the flaws, I understood all the glories of it."
"We are so different from each other," she added, "without history, religion or ethnicity, or even language today, and what brings us together is the Constitution and the institutions that she has. created. And the first of these is Congress. The word itself means coming together. And the fact that it happens – it does not happen all the time and it does not always go well, but it happens – is a miracle. "
Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs was born on December 27, 1943 in New Orleans. She said that her brother, Tommy, had invented his nickname because he could not say "Corinne".
She, her brother and sister Barbara were immersed in politics. They accompanied their father on field trips, attended ceremonies, and listened to the discussions at the table that followed when other political leaders went to their homes.
"Our parents did not send the kids away when the adults arrived," Roberts said. "In retrospect, I sometimes asked myself," What did these people think they had all these kids all the time? "But we were there and it was great for us."
Although her father had considerable influence over her, her mother, who actively contributed to her father's career, did the same with other women she knew, such as Lady Bird Johnson.
"I was very well aware of the influence of these women," she added, "I grew up a lot with the feeling that they could do any thing." what and that they could do a lot of things at the same time. "
This is a theme she addressed in her 1998 book, "We Are the Daughters of Our Mothers".
"For years, my mother has told me that it is not new to have women soldiers, diplomats, politicians, revolutionaries, explorers, founders of great institutions and business leaders; that women of my generation did not invent the wheel, "she wrote. "In the past, women may not have had the titles," she explained patiently and patiently, "but they did the tasks that matched those descriptions."
Roberts attended Catholic schools in New Orleans and Bethesda, Maryland. She graduated from Wellesley College, Massachusetts, in 1964. In 1966, she married Steven V. Roberts, then a New York Times correspondent. Journalism was a largely male world at the time, which pushed her back home when she went in search of a job.
"In 1966, I left a TV station in Washington DC to get married," she told the Times in 1994. "My husband was at The New York Times. For eight months, I looked for a job in various magazines and New York TV channels. I was asked, no matter where I went, how many words I could type.
[[[[Read about Mrs. Roberts' marriage, which lasted more than half a century.]
She eventually became a radio correspondent for CBS before joining NPR. (The sources give her years 1977 and 1978 to NPR.) With her colleagues Nina Totenberg and Linda Wertheimer, she began to change the journalistic landscape.
"As a troika, they managed to revolutionize political reporting," writes the Times this article from 1994. "Twenty years ago, journalism in Washington was more of a male sport, like football and foreign policy. But Linda arrived discreetly, falling gently on the bus of the presidential campaign; then went on to bulldoze Nina, with large shovels on Douglas Ginsburg and Anita Hill; and Cokie, with his sharp tongue, arrived with his judicious reports from Congress. A new kind of female punditry was born.
Ms. Roberts has written a political column subscribed with her husband for many years. They lived in Europe for a while in the 1970s and, over the years, she covered international reporting, but Washington was her main territory. She was covering Congress at a time when her mother was an increasingly important member, even if it did not bring her a professional advantage as big as it seemed, Roberts said.
"She would never tell me anything," she said in oral history. "She was disgusting discreet."
Ms. Boggs passed away in 2013.
At ABC, Ms. Roberts' roles included anchoring, with Sam Donaldson, the Sunday morning business program "This Week" from 1996 to 2002. She continued to provide segments for NPR even after joining ABC . The difference between the two, she said, was partly a matter of airtime.
"My average job on the Hill for NPR would be four and a half minutes," she said, "and my average work for ABC would be fifteen minutes."
Within NPR, one of her usual segments was "Ask Cokie", in which she used her vast knowledge of Washington, politics and history to answer listeners' questions on major, minor and obscure. One of them asked if nuclear weapons could be launched only by executive order, without congressional authorization. One wanted to know where the phrase "lame duck session" came from.
"No, no, no, no, not to grant – not to grant," said Mrs. Roberts in a characteristic emphatic style. "We had the right to vote as US citizens. We did not need the agreement of a few guys. "
She is survived by her husband; his two children, Lee and Rebecca Roberts; and six grandchildren.
Ms. Roberts has received many awards, including sharing several Emmy Awards. In 2008, the Library of Congress named her the recipient of one of her Living Legends Awards.
Ms. Roberts has long held a place at the forefront of history. In an interview with Kentucky Educational Television in 2017, she remembered a time when she had to remember not to become jaded by this closeness. It was in March 2013 and she was waiting under a cold rain for the Vatican's smoke signal that would soon announce the selection of Pope Francis.
"Hundreds of thousands of people flock to St. Peter's Square in the rain," she said. "And my first reaction was," Who are these people? What are they doing? It's crazy. And then I thought, "Jerk" to myself. "You really do not get it – it's a moment in history that may be the only time in the lives of these people that they occupy a preponderant place in history, and you're so privileged that you get it all the time. "
But, she added, the highlights of the scene give reporters only one part of the bigger picture of their time.
"An individual interview with a mom in a mall can tell you more about what's happening in the world and what people think about it."
Peter Baker contributed to reports on Air Force One.
[ad_2]
Source link