There's no reason why postgame interviews and press conferences can't be informative and at least relatively pleasant for the participants, but it doesn't work out that way in practice. Anyone who watches sports on TV - at least in the US of A, will have heard enough stupid questions to last a lifetime.
And yet...the insipid, repetitive questions U.S. sports fans are used to seem sublime compared to the stupid, self-indulgent, insulting, insensitive, and inappropriate questions that have been lobbed at Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi during their match. There may be a place for the occasional edgy question, worded as tactfully as possible, but for the most part the journalists and "journalists" in Dubai have failed miserably.
Some approximate versions follow (the answers are completely made up, obviously):
"I know you deliberately avoided answering this earlier, but c'mon, I'm asking nicely. Who are your other seconds?" ("I won't tell you, but if I send you all of my opening preparation on a thumb drive, will that be good enough?")
"What's your strategy for the next game?" ("Well, I've got a brilliant novelty prepared in the Anti-Marshall on move...hey, wait a minute!")
"What were you planning in case your opponent did X in the opening?" ("Sure, I'm stupid: I'll give away my prep for the next game!")
"How do you feel about losing on a blunder?" ("Fantastic! How do you feel about getting punched in the nose?")
"Hey Magnus, how does it feel to be three points up?" ("Uh, good?")
"Ian, you're down three points. Are you still trying to win this match?"
And so on. There was another question that to my mind was even worse, which I hated with the fire of a thousand suns. Rather than give it any further publicity (presumably the point of the question's being asked in the first place), I'll leave its identity to your imagination. Fortunately, no one has yet offered the much-mocked interview question "If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?" (supposedly but not actually asked by Barbara Walters), but there's still time.
So, dear readers, let's see if we can do better. What questions do you think would be interesting and appropriate? You can give types of examples, or specific ones. I'm confident that if we put our minds to it, we can do better than the foregoing. Alternatively, should we just put an end to these farces altogether until the end of the match?