A voice for Pasifika BARBARA'S HARD NEWS

The INews reporter says the job's worth the risks if she’s helping people

- Catherine Milford

For the past 21 years, Barbara Dreaver has been TVNZ’s face of the Pacific. She’s been arrested and threatened; interviewed kings, leaders and refugees; been accused of spying, and exposed a Samoan adoption scam. She’s won awards and changed the course of lives.

Barbara grew up barefoot and happy in Kiribati. Her father was a New Zealand teacher stationed there and her Kiribati-born mother had 11 siblings. Barbara has cousins throughout the Pacific, including Fiji, the Solomon Islands and Tonga.

The Dreavers moved to New Zealand when Barbara turned 10. “I learned to wear shoes! But I also learned I wanted to be a journalist.”

Her path wasn’t straightforward. “I didn’t get into AUT, so I studied journalism at Manukau Polytech,” she says. “Straightaway, I knew this was for me. I wanted to make a difference. I believed then and now that you must tell people’s stories and expose injustice or nothing changes.”

After study, she needed a job. “In the early ’90s, I couldn’t get one – people weren’t hiring Pasifika journalists. I moved to Rarotonga and worked at the Cook Island News, where I learned journalism, respect and that things are never as simple as they seem. Trust is everything. In a small place like Rarotonga, people must trust you to tell their story.”