BBC Journalist Yalda Hakim was the pride of her profession when she received a surprise call from the Taliban live on air this week and didn't miss a beat.

National news outlets reported she had been "praised for her expert handling" of the situation, while her Australian compatriots led with describing her as an “absolute boss” - which I feel is the best summation.

She quickly positioned a microphone near her phone on loud speaker, checked the audience could hear Suhail Shaheen and jumped straight into an impromptu half hour interview.

Ms Hakim, whose family fled Afghanistan on horseback when she was a baby before settling in Australia in the mid-1980s, had every reason to be emotionally invested and let the Taliban spokesman get to her. Instead she kept remarkably poised while hitting Mr Shaheen with all the important hard questions and not letting up.

No doubt she was braced for anger to be directed at her personally, as any reporter asking hard questions must be.

READ MORE: Devizes MP Danny Kruger shares 'deep dismay' over Afghanistan

While it is unlikely, I, or anyone I know personally, will ever find ourselves conducting a live interview of quite the same magnitude, Ms Hakim showcased skills that are cornerstones of our profession - quick-thinking, bravery and careful judgement.

This is certainly not unique to national journalists, as regional reporters demonstrated this week in their coverage of the Plymouth mass shooting.

Local journalists in Plymouth decided not to picture the gunman who killed five people in a rampage and said they wouldn't be contacting impacted residents straight away.

The incident hit the Plymouth Live team particularly hard as one of their journalists, engagement producer Jess Morcom, was the cousin of victim Lee Martyn.

Despite images of shooter Jake Davison appearing in national media, Plymouth Live instead centred its coverage on his five victims: his mother Maxine, 51, Lee Martyn, 43, and his three-year-old daughter Sophie, Stephen Washington, 59, and Kate Shepherd, 66.

READ MORE: I can’t put off my Covid vaccine any longer, and nor should you

Digital editor Edd Moore told the Press Gazette: “Without trying to get too emotional about it – this is more than a news story for us.

“We’re local people who live in and around the city and I’ve never known an incident that has had quite such a profound devastating impact on the city and quite frankly it’s just one of those where the residents deserve the space to grieve in our opinion.

“We’re journalists, of course, but on a local level we’re motivated by wanting to do the best by the city when all is said and done. With something quite as sensitive and as major as this, nothing matters more than that to us.”

And that's what it really comes down to. Local journalists deeply care about the communities they live and work in.

We don't always get it right, and with limited resources we can't do everything we would wish to.

But we're right here when it really matters, doing our very best for the community.