Sir Geoffrey Cox

Apr 8 2008 by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post

TO HAVE your career crowned by Sir Robin Day describing you as the finest television journalist in broadcasting history is as good an accolade as any. In the case of Sir Geoffrey Cox, the acclaim was well-deserved. He was the man who persuaded commercial television chiefs that News at Ten could be popular and viable without the need to trivialise or sensationalise events.

Sir Geoffrey, who has died, aged 97, was a New Zealander who came to the UK on an Oxford Rhodes scholarship (he impressed interviewers with his knowledge of pig breeding). He had an impressive and remarkable wartime career before entering journalism.

Before commercial television’s arrival in 1955, news as broadcast on the BBC was a dull affair. After ITN’s founding editor, Aidan Crawley, suddenly resigned within a year, Cox seized his chance and was determined to transform news broadcasting by utilising television’s full technological range. But he also revolutionised journalistic style with the incisive political interview, and Robin Day was given full rein to his grand inquisitorial style. Before 1955, such interviews were rigged and reverential – a style political spin doctors have been trying to force back ever since. Two such Day interviews made televis- ion history with President Nasser in 1957, just after the Suez crisis, and PM Harold Macmillan, in 1958, which was the first time a British political leader was publicly cross-examined. His anchormen such as Sandy Gall and Reginald Bosanquet personified Cox’s values – and became legends in their own lunchtimes.

Cox took great risks journalistically, especially to dispel anxiety by ITV’s partners that the programme was doomed. On the second night, he bust six months’ budget to bring exclusive footage of top ballet dancers Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn wrongfully jailed for drug offences in San Francisco. It helped put News at Ten in the top 10 TV programmes.

While at Oxford, Cox visited a Nuremburg rally in 1934, and later reported on the Spanish Civil War for the News Chronicle. Twice mentioned in despatches, he represented New Zealand at the Pacific War Council, sitting with Churchill and Roosevelt.

Cox’s legacy of a serious but unstuffy approach, with its emphasis on fairness and accuracy, still stands out as a beacon of excellence in journalism.

Sir Geoffrey Cox, journalist; born, April 7, 1910, died, April 2, 2008