Cokie Roberts

Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs, known as Cokie Roberts, was an American journalist and author. Her brother Tommy gave her the nickname as a child because he could not say “Corinne.” She spent decades as a political reporter and analyst for NPR, PBS, and ABC News, working on programs such as *Morning Edition*, *The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour*, *World News Tonight*, and *This Week*. Along with Susan Stamberg, Linda Wertheimer, and Nina Totenberg, she was considered one of NPR’s “Founding Mothers.” With her husband Steve, she wrote a weekly syndicated column for United Media. She served on the boards of nonprofits including the Kaiser Family Foundation and was appointed by President George W. Bush to his Council on Service and Civic Participation.

Roberts was born in New Orleans. Her parents, Lindy Boggs and Hale Boggs, were Democratic members of the House of Representatives from Louisiana; Lindy succeeded Hale after his plane disappeared over Alaska in 1972. Cokie was their third child. Her sister Barbara became mayor of Princeton, New Jersey, and ran for the U.S. Senate. Her brother Tommy became a prominent Washington, D.C., attorney and lobbyist. She attended the Academy of the Sacred Heart, an all-girls Catholic high school in New Orleans, and graduated from the Stone Ridge School outside Washington, D.C., in 1960. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Wellesley College in 1964.

Her first journalism job was at WRC-TV in Washington, D.C., hosting the public affairs program *Meeting of the Minds*. After moving to New York City with her husband, she worked as a reporter for Cowles Communications in 1967. She briefly produced for WNEW-TV before relocating to Los Angeles, where she worked for Altman Productions and then for KNBC-TV as producer of the children’s program *Serendipity*, which won a 1971 Los Angeles Area Emmy Award. She also lived in Greece, working as a stringer for CBS News in Athens.

She joined NPR in 1978 and served as congressional correspondent for more than ten years. Because she was a female journalist at the network when women were rarely in top roles, she was called one of NPR’s “founding mothers.” She contributed to PBS’s *The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour*; her coverage of the Iran-Contra Affair won the Edward Weintal Prize for Diplomatic Reporting in 1988. From 1981 to 1984, she cohosted *The Lawmakers*, a weekly public television program on Congress. Starting in 1992, she was a senior news analyst and commentator for NPR, primarily on *Morning Edition*. In 1994, *The New York Times* credited her, along with Wertheimer and Totenberg, with transforming male-dominated Washington political journalism.

She moved to ABC News in 1988 as a political correspondent for *World News Tonight with Peter Jennings*, while continuing part-time work at NPR. She appeared as a panelist on *This Week with David Brinkley* for many years. After Brinkley retired, she co-anchored the program with Sam Donaldson (renamed *This Week with Sam Donaldson & Cokie Roberts*) from 1996 to 2002, while serving as ABC News’s chief congressional analyst. They were replaced by George Stephanopoulos in September 2002. She continued reporting on politics, Congress, and public policy for *World News Tonight* and other ABC broadcasts, and occasionally appeared as a panelist on *This Week*. Her final NPR assignment was the *Morning Edition* segment “Ask Cokie,” answering listener questions about U.S. politics.

In 1989, Sister Dianna Ortiz, a Catholic nun from New Mexico, was abducted, raped, and tortured in Guatemala by members of a government-backed death squad. Her abductors believed she was a subversive. During an interview, Roberts contested Ortiz’s claim that an American was among her captors. (The United States provided significant military aid to Guatemala at the time.) Roberts implied Ortiz was lying about the entire episode, though Ortiz later won a lawsuit against a Guatemalan general she accused in the case. It was later revealed that Patton Boggs, the law firm of Roberts’s brother Tommy, was paid by the Guatemalan government to promote a more positive image of the regime, which was widely criticized for human rights abuses.

Roberts won the Edward R. Murrow Award, the Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for coverage of Congress, and a 1991 Emmy for her contribution to *Who Is Ross Perot?* In 1997, she received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement, presented by Sam Donaldson. In 2000, she won the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism. She and her mother, Lindy Boggs, won the Foremother Award from the National Center for Health Research in 2013. She was made an honoris causa initiate of Omicron Delta Kappa in 1995 from the University of Akron and later received the organization’s highest honor, the Laurel Crowned Circle. She was inducted into the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame in 2000.