THE BBC’s Sonja McLaughlan is a fine journalist with a talent for asking good post-match questions and not being intimidated by sullen answers.
Her style is polite and respectful and it is also the antithesis of the braying sycophancy that has invaded some modern broadcasting as rights holders grow more and more nervous about offending sport’s protagonists.
It is a measure of quite how accustomed we have grown to this sycophancy that McLaughlan was deluged with abuse last week after England’s defeat by Wales in the Six Nations because, when confronted with the monosyllabic grunts that are the lingua franca of England captain Owen Farrell, she repeated a question after Wales’ 40-24 victory in an attempt to elicit more information from him.