美国国家公共电台 NPR Cokie Roberts, Pioneering Journalist Who Helped Shape NPR, Dies At 75

 

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

We are remembering Cokie Roberts this morning. Her family says she died of cancer at the age of 75 years old. Cokie was a leader in two of America's main news organizations, including NPR. But calling her a journalist does not fully¹ capture her remarkable² life. Here's our colleague, Steve Inskeep.

STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE³: On the radio at MORNING EDITION, we called her NPR's Cokie Roberts. On television, they called her ABC's Cokie Roberts. Neither designation was wrong, though, as we'll hear, both were incomplete. At birth in 1943, her family gave her a string of names, and an interviewer once wondered why she did not use any of them.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs Roberts...

COKIE ROBERTS, BYLINE: Hello.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: ...Where did Cokie come from?

ROBERTS: My brother, Tommy, was three years older than me, and when I came home from the hospital, he couldn't say Corrine. And he christened me Cokie, and I've been Cokie ever since.

INSKEEP: Her maiden⁴ name was Boggs, as in Hale Boggs, her father, a very powerful Louisiana congressman⁵. In the 1960s, Boggs was able to persuade the exceptionally strong-willed President Lyndon Johnson to do what Boggs needed. In 1972, Boggs was campaigning for a colleague in Alaska when their plane disappeared without a trace. His daughter, Cokie, was just under 30.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

ROBERTS: I lived in California at the time. I was a young mom. I had a couple of kids. I had a child who had just turned 2, and my little boy turned 4 while I was in Alaska looking for my father.

INSKEEP: Cokie's mother, Lindy Boggs, ran for and won her late husband's seat in Congress. Cokie returned to Washington and met an NPR reporter named Nina Totenberg.

NINA TOTENBERG, BYLINE: In the late '70s, Steve Roberts, who then worked for The New York Times, her husband, delivered to me her resume. And I then brought it to the head of news at the time, and he hired her on a temporary basis. And you think of an important story in our national life over the last 40 years or so, Cokie was part of it.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCASTS)

ROBERTS: President Carter said that he is committed to a universal, comprehensive plan that would provide basic health coverage⁶ to all Americans. But Carter...

The hearings have been about more than the sale of arms to Iran and the diversion of funds to the Contras. The events surrounding the Iran-Contra affair have been about two...

Then what happens? Well, it's most likely that there are not enough votes in the House of Representatives to impeach⁷ the president.

INSKEEP: In the 1980s, her NPR reporting on Congress caught the attention of ABC News.

(SOUNDBITE OF ABC NEWS "THIS WEEK" THEME)

INSKEEP: And ABC did something that was still relatively⁸ new. It included a woman, Cokie Roberts, among the male panelists on a Sunday morning news show. She worked for ABC for more than 30 years...

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

ROBERTS: Cokie Roberts, ABC News, Capitol Hill.

INSKEEP: ...Even as she continued with NPR. Critics of her reporting sometimes argued that she was too close to the Washington political figures she covered. Her fellow ABC panelist, George F. Will, saw her outlook differently.

GEORGE WILL: If you don't like the game of politics, I don't see how you write about it well. It's as though someone said, I'm going to be a baseball writer, and I really don't like baseball. She liked the game of politics. She understood that in some ways it is a game, which is not a pejorative⁹ and not a diminishing and not a disparaging¹⁰ term. It's hard to connect cheerfulness and partisanship¹¹ these days. She did it in her career and in her life.

INSKEEP: Roberts said she had empathy for politicians, human beings, however flawed, who mostly tried to do what they considered right. Though in her later years, she added that politics was growing harder to like.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Cokie Roberts, is Washington still like it was back then?

ROBERTS: No, not even close. It's tragically¹² different.

INSKEEP: She told C-SPAN that partisanship was growing extreme. In recent years, younger women viewed Cokie Roberts as a pioneer and mentor¹³, and she offered a particular view of the fight for women's equality. She was not that interested in telling women how to behave differently. She was more interested in changing systems that held them back.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

ROBERTS: In recent years, we've heard this business about mommy wars and leaning in and all this stuff, you know. It's just - the conversation to me that's worth having is a conversation about equal pay for equal work, about making the workplace a far more caretaker-friendly place to be.

INSKEEP: Because the caretakers of both children and the elderly were so often women. Roberts wrote several books on the political history of women. Earlier this year, we were discussing that subject on the air when she broke in.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

INSKEEP: The House of Representatives passed the 19th Amendment¹⁴ to the Constitution granting women the right to vote.

ROBERTS: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no granting - no granting. We had the right to vote as American citizens. We didn't have to be granted it by some bunch of guys.

INSKEEP: OK. That, we should mention, is NPR's own Cokie Roberts correcting the introduction to this story.

A few years ago, we talked about Washington women while sitting in the cottage that had been used by President Lincoln's family when they were in the capital.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

INSKEEP: When you have researched and read the letters of the women of this era, the mid-19th century, do you feel in some way that you recognize them?

ROBERTS: I always recognize women in history. It's really remarkable how much we do the same things century in, century out. You recognize their concern about their children. You recognize their interest in fashion. You recognize the jewelry¹⁵ that they're wearing. But you also recognize their intelligence and their political sensibility.

INSKEEP: Women can be overtly¹⁶ ambitious today rather than covertly¹⁷ ambitious.

ROBERTS: They can be overtly ambitious carefully.

INSKEEP: Go on.

ROBERTS: It's still very difficult for a woman to have the word ambitious attached to her.

INSKEEP: Over the course of decades, Cokie Roberts managed to pursue her ambitions. And her NPR colleague Susan Stamberg said she did that with integrity.

SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE: Cokie has been a model for all of us. She was a child of the Congress. She grew up to be its brilliant observer. She connected democracy and the truth always and was deeply committed to it. She demonstrated it in every report that she did and in all her behavior as an individual.

INSKEEP: Now, we told you at the start that when people called her NPR's Cokie Roberts or ABC'S Cokie Roberts, it was not quite the whole story. She did not belong to a company but to her country.

(SOUNDBITE OF PETER BRADLEY ADAMS' "INTERLUDE FOR PIANO")

GREENE: Cokie Roberts was 75 years old. And there is so much more to say about her influence, and we'll be hearing that in the hours and in the days ahead.

1 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

2 remarkable   

adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的

参考例句：

• She has made remarkable headway in her writing skills.她在写作技巧方面有了长足进步。
• These cars are remarkable for the quietness of their engines.这些汽车因发动机没有噪音而不同凡响。

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 maiden   

n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的

参考例句：

• The prince fell in love with a fair young maiden.王子爱上了一位年轻美丽的少女。
• The aircraft makes its maiden flight tomorrow.这架飞机明天首航。

5 Congressman   

n.（美）国会议员

参考例句：

• He related several anecdotes about his first years as a congressman.他讲述自己初任议员那几年的几则轶事。
• The congressman is meditating a reply to his critics.这位国会议员正在考虑给他的批评者一个答复。

6 coverage   

n.报导，保险范围，保险额，范围，覆盖

参考例句：

• There's little coverage of foreign news in the newspaper.报纸上几乎没有国外新闻报道。
• This is an insurance policy with extensive coverage.这是一项承保范围广泛的保险。

7 impeach   

v.弹劾；检举

参考例句：

• We must impeach the judge for taking bribes.我们一定要检举法官收受贿赂。
• The committee decided to impeach the President.委员会决定弹劾总统。

8 relatively   

adv.比较...地，相对地

参考例句：

• The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
• The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。

9 pejorative   

adj.贬低的，轻蔑的

参考例句：

• In the context of ethnic tourism,commercialization often has a pejorative connotation.摘要在民族旅游语境中，商品化经常带有贬义色彩。
• But news organizations also should make every effort to keep the discussion civil and to discourage the dissemination of falsehoods or pejorat

10 disparaging   

adj.轻蔑的，毁谤的v.轻视( disparage的现在分词 )；贬低；批评；非难

参考例句：

• Halliday's comments grew daily more and more sparklingly disagreeable and disparaging. 一天天过去，哈里代的评论越来越肆无忌惮，越来越讨人嫌，越来越阴损了。 来自英汉文学 - 败坏赫德莱堡
• Even with favorable items they would usually add some disparaging comments. 即使对好消息，他们也往往要加上几句诋毁的评语。 来自互联网

11 Partisanship   

n. 党派性, 党派偏见

参考例句：

• Her violent partisanship was fighting Soames's battle. 她的激烈偏袒等于替索米斯卖气力。
• There was a link of understanding between them, more important than affection or partisanship. ' 比起人间的感情，比起相同的政见，这一点都来得格外重要。 来自英汉文学

12 tragically   

adv. 悲剧地，悲惨地

参考例句：

• Their daughter was tragically killed in a road accident. 他们的女儿不幸死于车祸。
• Her father died tragically in a car crash. 她父亲在一场车祸中惨死。

13 mentor   

n.指导者，良师益友；v.指导

参考例句：

• He fed on the great ideas of his mentor.他以他导师的伟大思想为支撑。
• He had mentored scores of younger doctors.他指导过许多更年轻的医生。

14 amendment   

n.改正，修正，改善，修正案

参考例句：

• The amendment was rejected by 207 voters to 143.这项修正案以207票对143票被否决。
• The Opposition has tabled an amendment to the bill.反对党已经就该议案提交了一项修正条款。

15 jewelry   

n.（jewllery）（总称）珠宝

参考例句：

• The burglars walked off with all my jewelry.夜盗偷走了我的全部珠宝。
• Jewelry and lace are mostly feminine belongings.珠宝和花边多数是女性用品。

16 overtly   

ad.公开地

参考例句：

• There were some overtly erotic scenes in the film. 影片中有一些公开色情场面。
• Nietzsche rejected God's law and wrote some overtly blasphemous things. 尼采拒绝上帝的律法，并且写了一些渎神的作品。

17 covertly   

adv.偷偷摸摸地

参考例句：

• Naval organizations were covertly incorporated into civil ministries. 各种海军组织秘密地混合在各民政机关之中。 来自辞典例句
• Modern terrorism is noteworthy today in that it is being done covertly. 现代的恐怖活动在今天是值得注意的，由于它是秘密进行的。 来自互联网