GEOFFREY COXSir Geoffrey Cox, who died on 2 April, 2008, just days before turning 98, was one of the most respected journalists of his era who went on to be a founder of the News at Ten.The New Zealander was a war correspondent for British newspapers in the 1930s and also served his country as an intelligence officer and diplomat during the Second World War.After returning to Britain, he became editor of Independent Television News and was responsible for bringing news into the modern age by trailblazing many of the conventions accepted as standard today.Sir Robin Day, who worked under Mr Cox at ITN, said he was "the best television journalist we have ever known in Britain".He was born on 7 April, 1910, in Palmerston on New Zealand’s north island. After studying history at Otago University, he won a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford in 1932. After graduation in 1935 he went straight into work with the now-defunct News Chronicle paper.During his student days he had spent time in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia and correctly predicted the forthcoming war. In 1936 his skills as a linguist and the fact that correspondents from the liberal Chronicle faced arrest if General Franco was victorious saw Mr Cox sent to Spain to cover the Civil War in the place of a more experienced reporter.His vivid and impassioned reports, later collected in the book Defence of Madrid, caught the eye of the Daily Express for whom he reported on the beginnings of the Second World War from Paris and Vienna.He refused a job as a leader writer because he disagreed with Express owner Lord Beaverbrook’s appeasement politics, so continued to report from the field, narrowly escaping the advancing German forces in Belgium.Come the 1940s, his political convictions compelled him to give up journalism and join the war effort. He enlisted in the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force and served in Greece, Crete, Egypt and Libya, before being made an intelligence officer by General Bernard Freyberg, commander of the New Zealand Army.In 1942 he became First Secretary of the newly-established New Zealand mission in Washington where he was a member of the Pacific War Council, sitting alongside Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. He ended the war with General Freyberg in Italy.After the war he returned to Britain and the News Chronicle where he served as assistant editor. Around this time he made his first forays into broadcasting, preparing scripts for cinema newsreels and BBC World Service bulletins.He made his first television appearances on the panel programme Press Conference and by the middle of the 1950s he had established a reputation as an esteemed television interviewer, speaking to politicians like Rab Butler and Clement Attlee, as well as producing coverage of key events.ITN was launched in 1955, but despite the popularity of its bulletins, it faced an early financial crisis and founding editor Aidan Crawley resigned after just five months. Mr Cox jumped at the chance to take over the role, which he held for the next 12 years.Under Mr Cox’s guidance, ITN spearheaded the development of television news, hiring strong personalities to read the headlines, sending camera crews further afield and allowing interviewers like Robin Day, the ‘Grand Inquisitor’, freedom to grill subjects. The BBC lagged behind for many years during Cox’s reign which culminated in the launch of News at Ten in 1967.He left ITN the following year to become deputy chairman of Yorkshire Television and later chaired Tyne Tees Television and LBC Radio. He received many accolades during his career, including the Royal Television Society’s Silver and Gold Medals, a special award from the Television Producers’ Guild and a knighthood in 1966.He spent the later years of his life in Gloucestershire where he enjoyed fishing and painting. He was married to Cecily Talbot Turner from 1935 until her death in 1993. They had two sons and two daughters, all of whom survived him.
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