Journalists, lawmakers remember Cokie Roberts as a broadcast 'pioneer'
Political journalist and author Cokie Roberts died Tuesday due to complications from breast cancer, her family has announced. She was 75.
Roberts spent decades covering politics with ABC News and NPR, anchoring ABC News' This Week for 6 years and continuing as a commentator for years after. News of her death brought dozens of commemorations from journalists she worked beside and inspired, and even from lawmakers she reported on from both sides of the aisle.
In a statement, former President Barack Obama called Roberts a "model to young women when the profession was still dominated by men." Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) similarly deemed Cokie a "trailblazing ... sister breast cancer survivor." "No one understood the Congress and Washington better than Cokie Roberts," Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) tweeted to sum it up.
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As for Roberts' colleagues, Fox News' John Roberts called her "a true pioneer of the business" in a Tuesday tweet. ABC News' Jon Karl shared a video from Roberts' visit to the 2016 Democratic National Convention — the last of the 22 national conventions she went to.
ABC News' George Stephanopoulos also shared his memories of working with Roberts in video below. Kathryn Krawczyk
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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.
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