Cokie and Steve Roberts to present lecture on "Media, Politics and the Congress"

NOTE: A publication-quality photo of Cokie and Steve Roberts is available on the Web at http://www.iuinfo.indiana.edu/pixs/cokie_and_steve.jpg

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The Center on Congress at Indiana University will present a series of appearances on Monday (Feb. 26) on the IU Bloomington campus by Cokie and Steve Roberts, two respected Washington, D.C.-based journalists who report on many of the core issues facing our society.

Cokie Roberts, ABC News chief congressional analyst and co-anchor of "This Week with Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts," and Steve Roberts, contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report, will speak on "Media, Politics and the Congress" at 7 p.m. in Alumni Hall of the Indiana Memorial Union. The lecture is free and open to the public.

While on campus, they also will meet with IU students and faculty in classes in journalism, public and environmental affairs, political science and telecommunications, and attend a luncheon with news executives from the Indiana media.

As wife and husband, they are co-authors of the best-selling book, From This Day Forward, an account of their more than 30-year marriage, as well as other marriages in American history. Together they also write a syndicated column that appears in more than 500 newspapers across the country.

Their visit to campus is being sponsored by the Center on Congress, which was created by IU in 1999 to help improve the public's understanding of Congress and foster greater civic engagement, especially among young people. The center is non-partisan and its goal is purely educational -- to explain the work and role of Congress.

The center is directed by Lee Hamilton, who served Indiana as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years before coming to IU. It presents information on Congress in a variety of ways including newspaper articles, Web site materials, radio commentaries, teaching materials and videos for students. It also presents awards to Indiana schoolteachers who effectively convey the role and purposes of Congress in our society.

Cokie Roberts covers politics, Congress and public policy for ABC News, and reports for its "World News Tonight" and other news broadcasts. She also serves as a news analyst for National Public Radio, where she was the congressional correspondent for more than a decade. In that time she won numerous awards, including the highest honor in public radio, the Edward R. Murrow Award. She also was the first broadcast journalist to win the prestigious Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for her coverage of Congress.

She received an Emmy Award in 1991 for her contribution to the ABC News special, "Who Is Ross Perot?" Before joining ABC, she was a contributor to PBS-TV's "MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour," and her coverage of the Iran/Contra Affair for that program earned her the Weintal Award in 1987. From 1981 to 1984, she also co-hosted "The Lawmakers," a weekly public television program on Congress. She also has been a reporter for CBS News in Athens, Greece.

A 1964 graduate in political science from Wellesley College, she is the author of another national best-seller, We Are Our Mothers' Daughters, which explores the diverse roles women have played throughout American history and the connections and distinctions among different generations of women.

Steve Roberts has been a journalist for more than 35 years and has covered some of the major events of his time, such as the anti-war movement of the 1960s, eight presidential campaigns and President Ronald Reagan's historic trip to Russia in 1987.

After graduating magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1964, he joined the New York Times as research assistant to James "Scotty" Reston, then the paper's Washington bureau chief. His 25-year career with the Times included assignments as bureau chief in Los Angeles and Athens and as the congressional and White House correspondents.

He was a senior writer at U.S. News for seven years before becoming a contributing editor there. Like his wife, he also is a well-known commentator on radio and television, appearing regularly on Cable News Network, the PBS program "Washington Week in Review," and ABC Radio. He also hosts his own television show, "The Roberts Report," which is carried worldwide by Voice of America.

Since 1997, he has been the Shapiro Professor of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, and he has taught there the last 10 years.

For more information on the Center on Congress, go to its Web site at http://congress.indiana.edu/ or call 812-856-4706.

(George Vlahakis, 812-855-0846, gvlahaki@indiana.edu)