BAFTA-winning investigative journalist was 83
Roger Cook, the pioneering investigative journalist best known as frontman of British channel ITV’s current affairs program ‘The Cook Report’ in the 1980s and 1990s, has died. He was 83.
Cook’s family confirmed the news in a statement.
“In addition to a distinguished and award-winning career in journalism, Roger was first and foremost a beloved husband and father,” it said.
ITV led the tributes, saying Cook “worked tirelessly to expose criminal wrongdoing and injustice, helping to bring about important and lasting changes to the law” and that “his fearless contribution to journalism will be long remembered.”
Born in New Zealand, Cook moved to Britain in the 1960s after starting his career as a radio journalist in Australia. After a long stint on BBC Radio 4’s ‘The World at One’, he created and presented the radio program ‘Checkpoint’ in the early 1970s, in which he aimed to expose criminals, con artists and official incompetence.
‘The Cook Report’, launched in 1985, was said to be a more expensive screen version of his radio programme. It quickly became known for its filmed stings and Cook’s numerous confrontations with those he targeted – some of whom responded with verbal and sometimes physical abuse. Cook — who was credited with inventing the door-to-door interview technique — was injured a number of times (he suffered three broken ribs during a confrontation on an earlier TV show), and at one point police said a hit man was hired to kill him. “Britain’s bravest/most beaten up journalist,” is how Cook was described at the time.
At its peak, ‘The Cook Report’ was the highest-rated current affairs program on British television, with more than 12 million viewers. It ran for sixteen seasons until 1999 and returned in 2007 for a special entitled ‘Roger Cook’s Greatest Hits’, in which Cook revisited some of his most famous stories.
In 1997, the British Academy honored Cook with a special BAFTA award for “25 years of investigative reporting of outstanding quality.”
