Do we like them?

Do we like Roger Cook?

Our score: 7 out of 10. A clean record on harm and a strong public-interest career, held back from the top because his views beyond the work are thinly documented.

Roger Cook was born to New Zealand-born parents and raised in Australia, where he started out as a reporter for the ABC. He moved to Britain in 1968 and landed at BBC Radio 4, where his show Checkpoint went after con men and crooks. That is where the confrontational doorstep interview was born, and he became its best-known practitioner.

He carried the approach to BBC television's Newsnight and then, in 1987, to ITV, fronting The Cook Report for over a decade. At its peak it pulled about 12 million viewers. He used undercover stings and was known for regular run-ins with violent criminals, which is a polite way of saying he copped plenty of hidings for his trouble.

The big stoush came in 2000, when the News of the World published articles alleging that Cook Report programmes had been faked. Cook, Carlton Communications and Carlton Television sued for libel. The ITC found in October 2001 there was no evidence of fakery, and in July 2002 the paper settled, accepting its articles contained “material inaccuracies which should not have been published.”

On the harm test, nothing turned up. We found no remarks from him about LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet, and no record of him platforming anyone who pushes harm. That absence is honest but thin, because he was a reporter rather than a commentator, and the sources we could open are mostly obituary-style coverage.

The good stuff is the work itself. Reports credit the show with prompting police action and law changes, though the pieces we could open do not tie particular cases to particular outcomes. ITV called him “one of broadcasting's most trusted and respected figures,” and he is described as BAFTA award-winning.

So would we support him? Yes. He went after fraudsters and violent operators on behalf of ordinary people, took the knocks, and was cleared when a newspaper alleged the programmes were rigged. The caveat is only that we found little of his own voice on wider issues, which stops this from being a top-shelf score.