Geoffrey Cox (journalist)

Sir Geoffrey Sandford Cox, CNZM, CBE (7 April 1910 – 2 April 2008) was a New Zealand-born newspaper and television journalist. He was a former editor and chief executive of ITN and a founder of News at Ten.[1]

Cox was born in Palmerston North, New Zealand, the son of a bank manager, and educated at Southland Boys' High School, followed by the University of Otago and then a Rhodes scholarship to Oriel College, Oxford, during 1932-35.

His career in journalism began in 1935 when he joined the News Chronicle. He covered the Spanish Civil War from Madrid, then went to Vienna and Paris for the Daily Express in which he broke the news in 1939 that British troops had arrived in France. He then covered the Winter War from Finland. He was critical of the Soviet attack on Finland but foresaw that the Red Army would defeat the Germans.

He enlisted in the New Zealand Army, serving in Crete and North Africa as an Intelligence Officer on Freyberg's staff, then was First Secretary at the new New Zealand Embassy in Washington (when Walter Nash was Minister to the United States) before serving in Italy.

In 1956 he joined ITN, the new commercial TV channel in Britain as News Editor of Independent Television News. He started News at Ten in 1967. In 1977 Cox joined Yorkshire Television (YTV) as Ward Thomas' Deputy Chairman.[2]

Bibliography

  • Defence of Madrid (1937, Victor Gollancz, London) ISBN 978-1-877372-38-4 (2006 Otago University Press edition) (reprinted 2006 review)
  • The Red Army Moves (1941, Victor Gollancz, London) (report from Finland on the Winter War)
  • The Road to Trieste (1947, Heinemann, London)
  • The Race for Trieste (1977, W. Kimber, London) & (1977, Whitcoulls, Christchurch) ISBN 0-7183-0375-X (revision of The Road to Trieste)
  • See It Happen (The Making of ITN) (1983, Bodley Head, London) ISBN 0-370-30950-2
  • A Tale of Two Battles (1987, W. Kimber, London) ISBN 0-7183-0642-2 (Greece & Crete, North Africa in World War II; Crete & Sidi Rezegh)
  • Countdown to War (1988, W. Kimber, London) ISBN 0-7183-0674-0
  • Pioneering Television News: a first hand report on a revolution in journalism (c1995, John Libbey, London) ISBN 0-86196-484-5
  • Eyewitness: A Memoir of Europe in the 1930s (1999, University of Otago, Dunedin) ISBN 1-877133-70-1
  • A New Zealand Boyhood (2004, Amadines Press, Gloucestershire, England) ISBN 0-948640-65-0

References

  1. ↑ Dance of the Peacocks: New Zealanders in exile in the times of Hitler and Mao Tse Tung (Vintage Books, 2003) James McNeish, ISBN 1-86941-564-7
  2. ↑ Jeremy Potter. Independent Television in Britain VOL 4. p89

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