Tributes have been pouring in for Dutch television presenter and journalist Sonja Barend who died aged 86 at her home in Amsterdam on Saturday.
Barend began working in television in the 1960s and was particularly well known for her interviews, which earned her the nickname “queen of the talk show”. Sonja’s Goed Nieuws Show and Sonja op Maandag, both made for socialist broadcaster VARA, were watched by millions.
“Sonja Barend laid the groundwork for the television interview in all its guises,” Nieuwsuur presenter Marielle Tweebeeke told the Telegraaf. “On the one hand the interviews with politicians in which she was a sharp interlocutor and on the other the interviews with ordinary people and artists when she showed her social side,” Tweebeeke said.
Barend has an annual prize for the best television interview named after her, the Sonja Barend Award, about which she jokingly said she would have liked it herself.
“I really admire people who can do a good TV interview, I know how difficult it can be,” she said. Barend was not under any illusion her choice of mostly social subjects brought about change. “I see the problems we talked about being discussed now and they are worse. (..) But maybe I did make people more aware in an hour of entertaining television,” she said.
According to journalist Coen Verbraak, who made a documentary about her, Barend “talked” to people. She listened, was real and made contact with her guests. She did not just tick off the questions on a list thought up by her team,” he said.
Prime minister Rob Jetten said he was “sad to hear” about Barend’s death. “Whole generations grew up with her sharp questions and warm conversations. She gave people a voice and united the Netherlands around the kitchen table,” he said on social media.
Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema remembered Barend as she walked around the city centre as “a real Amsterdammer, stately, jolly and always with a sharp observation at the ready.”
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