Staring down the barrel of the camera, she\u2019s holding her ground with a focused and unflinching gaze. People have told her she looks strong and serious in the photo. In fact, she was furious. <\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, I was pissed off at what had just happened,\u201d she says, although exactly what had happened remains opaque. \u201cThe incident left more questions than answers.\u201d <\/p>\n
TVNZ’s Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver in 2018 reporting on Cyclone Gita, the most severe storm to hit Tonga since records began.<\/p>\n
Verbal and physical threats are nothing new for the Kiribati-born journalist, who\u2019s been based in Auckland as the Pacific correspondent for 1News since 2003. <\/p>\n
The level of personal courage she has required as a frontline reporter will surprise many who delve into her memoir, but Dreaver has been ruffling feathers \u2013 in the islands and back home in New Zealand \u2013 since she was a rookie. <\/p>\n
In her first job out of journalism school, she wrote a series called \u201cCrooks in the Cooks\u201d for the Cook Island News in Rarotonga, and a local MP called for her to be deported. In 2008, she was banned from Fiji for eight years after reporting on poverty there.<\/p>\n
Championing coverage of Pasifika issues in the mainstream media, Dreaver has broken some of the region\u2019s most significant stories, from political corruption and financial scandals to the impact of climate change and China\u2019s creeping influence in the Pacific. <\/p>\n
Along the way, she\u2019s navigated crocodile-infested swamps and filmed among live mustard-gas shells in the Solomons, been detained by the police in Nauru, and visited communities devastated by cyclones, earthquakes and tsunami.<\/p>\n
In the days before stricter health and safety rules kicked in, she and camera operator Raymond Moore once flew so close to an erupting volcano in Vanuatu that spewing debris left dents in the side of their charter plane. <\/p>\n
Bill Ralston, then TVNZ\u2019s head of news and current affairs, high-fived Dreaver when she returned with the dramatic footage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were lots of things we did back then that we didn\u2019t even question,\u201d she says, with a hint of regret. \u201cI do like a good adventure tale.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dreaver interviews former Fiji Prime Minister and 1987 coup leader Sitiveni Rabuka after his acquittal on electoral fraud. Rabuka was returned to power in the country’s 2022 general election.<\/p>\n
It hasn\u2019t always been easy, as a woman reporting on the Pacific, which remains a volatile region. Egos can be \u201cvery fragile\u201d and male leaders don\u2019t always appreciate being challenged by a female journalist.<\/p>\n
Dreaver, who never reveals her sources, has chosen to protect the identity of certain people in her book. <\/p>\n
\u201cThings can change quite quickly and I\u2019m very aware that I don\u2019t want to put a target on anyone\u2019s back,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not including politicians in that. They have to wear it, right? And I\u2019ve been around for so long now they\u2019ve kind of got used to me.\u201d <\/p>\n
The title of her memoir, Be Brave, is a reference to the advice Dreaver gives to young journalists, especially those working in the Pacific. (\u201cWithout fear or favour\u201d is her other motto.) <\/p>\n
That might mean asking difficult questions or pursuing an important story, knowing some people might be upset or offended by it.<\/p>\n
At the height of the Covid epidemic, Dreaver took on an advocacy role, calling out the New Zealand Government for its failure to engage in good faith with Pacific health providers.<\/p>\n
Later, she faced vitriolic abuse on social media from the other side of the fence after revealing four positive cases had been discovered in a Pasifika family, following 100 days without community spread. <\/p>\n
Writing a script on the beach in Samoa for that evening’s 6pm news bulletin. Photo \/ Steve Lawton<\/p>\n
Fears the story would trigger a racist backlash weren\u2019t unfounded, but Dreaver still believes suppressing that information would have been irresponsible. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a lot of hurt over that. It\u2019s hard, you know, with my community because they\u2019re targeted a lot anyway. But I had to do it because there were lives at risk,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI defined early on that my job is not to do glowing stories about the Pacific. My job is to give Pacific people a voice and expose both the good and its flaws, because I\u2019ve got to tell the truth. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s hard is dealing with the fallout that I know is coming. And so I just have to brace myself and be brave. You have to be brave to be a journalist. And that\u2019s something I\u2019ve muttered to myself when I\u2019ve been in a really bad situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dreaver found herself in one of those tight spots when she was detained in Nauru (for reasons that have never been made clear) while covering the Pacific Islands Forum in 2018. Police officers plucked her off the street<\/a>, confiscating her camera and phone. <\/p>\n Eventually released several hours later, after being stripped of her media accreditation, she crossed live to TVNZ for the 6pm news. <\/p>\n The time she felt most in danger, however, was as a much less-experienced radio reporter covering the Fiji coup in 2000. Armed rebels led by local businessman George Speight had stormed the Parliament building and taken the Government hostage. <\/p>\n Making her way inside the compound, Dreaver secured the first live international interview with Speight on Radio New Zealand, but tensions were high. <\/p>\n At night, some young rebels \u2013 \u201chigh or drunk\u201d \u2013 tried to break into her sleeping area, and there was talk that one of the hostages would be executed, using the media as witnesses. <\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know if they would have or not, but it felt like anything was possible.\u201d<\/p>\n Speight was eventually arrested, and Dreaver was in court to see him sentenced to death for treason, although the penalty was commuted to life imprisonment. He was released from jail in 2024 after being granted a presidential pardon.<\/p>\n Understanding the Pacific and its complex history of interwoven relationships is like peeling away the layers of an onion, she says. Power dynamics in the region are more nuanced and journalists can fall out of favour on a political whim. <\/p>\n \u201cBut at the same time, I\u2019m not going to pander to that. There are times when I\u2019ll be cut off from a prime minister for ages because I\u2019ve done something they particularly don\u2019t like. Well, tough, because I\u2019m going to keep doing it, with or without them.\u201d<\/p>\n Dreaver was born on Ocean Island (now Banaba), a coral atoll in Kiribati that for decades was infamously strip-mined for its phosphate deposits, stripping away 90% of the island\u2019s surface. <\/p>\n When the family settled back in New Zealand in the late 70s, her parents carried a piece of the atoll with them. <\/p>\n The chunk of phosphate now sits on display at Dreaver\u2019s Auckland home \u2013 a link to the past, but also a reminder of how the Pacific Islands have been commodified and exploited for their physical and human resources.<\/p>\n Dreaver\u2019s Kiwi father had been posted to Kiribati (then the Gilbert and Ellice Islands) in the 60s as an adult education officer with Volunteer Service Abroad. He and her mother met on the main island of Tarawa, where Dreaver spent much of her early childhood.<\/p>\n After graduating with a BA in education from the University of Auckland, Dreaver did a six-month Pacific Islands Journalism Course at the Manukau Institute of Technology. She came top of the class, but whether it was racism or snobbery, no one wanted to hire her.<\/p>\n Decamping to Rarotonga, where she cut her teeth as a journalist, she spent several years as co-owner and editor of a weekly newspaper, the Cook Islands Press, with her then partner, Jason Brown.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery Monday, we would wake to find confidential documents slipped under the door by people angry at the corrupt Government,\u201d she writes in Be Brave. <\/p>\n Life took another twist in 1998, when Dreaver moved back to Auckland with her baby son and found the media landscape was just as she\u2019d left it eight years earlier \u2013 \u201cunwelcoming and discriminatory\u201d. <\/p>\n After a stint with Radio New Zealand, she moved to TVNZ, which was establishing a Pacific unit led by Ewart Barnsley, who later moved to Fair Go.<\/p>\n \u201cIn those early days, I learned how to fight for story placement in the news bulletin,\u201d she writes. \u201cSometimes, Pacific stories weren\u2019t valued. Over the years, that changed.\u201d<\/p>\n A highly respected journalist, Dreaver\u2019s presence belies her diminutive stature. (It\u2019s true, people really do look taller on TV.) <\/p>\n During Dame Jacinda Ardern\u2019s first visit to the Pacific as Prime Minister in 2018, one member of the media pack remembers Dreaver ditching anything on the official schedule she considered a waste of time and heading off to film independently. <\/p>\n Describing herself as a \u201ccontrol freak\u201d, she also likes to edit her own stories. Often she\u2019s running on sheer adrenalin.<\/p>\n \u201cI love chasing bad people,\u201d she says, \u201cand I don\u2019t like injustice. So when I chase people, it\u2019s kind of fun.\u201d<\/p>\nDreaver speaks to the media after being released from police detention in Nauru in 2018. Photo \/ Jason Oxenham<\/p>\n
Dreaver (right) and her sister Rachel spent their young childhood in Kiribati, then a British colony. Their school bell was a shell from World War II.<\/p>\n
Dreaver with school children in the Samoan village of Lalomanu, on the first anniversary of a tsunami that killed more than 140 people in 2009. Photo \/ Steve Lawton<\/p>\n