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Prominent Pacific journalist, Michael Field, has launched a new book titled: Swimming With Sharks.
Pacific Scoop:
Report – By Selwyn Manning.
Prominent South Pacific journalist Michael Field has launched a new book titled: Swimming With Sharks – Tales From The South Pacific Frontline.
In the new book Field writes of the fragility in the wider Pacific. He notes that this fragility is both manmade and the consequence of natural phenomenon. His account is rich in first hand experience, captured and retold from three decades of reporting Pacific issues and crisis. He casts his net wide, retelling experiences from the extremes of Melanesia in the west to Fiji, to Samoa and Tonga, right across to the far eastern positioned islands in French Polynesia.
Always frank, always controversial, Mike Field is known by many and critiqued by a few. He is well regarded by scores of journalists who have worked with him in the Pacific, he’s helped out this writer on a number of occasions, a pillar of support for those who have come to earn his respect or colleagueship, a respected inquisitor of the Pacific’s political elite, and is always keen to embrace debate on a multitude of issues impacting on the people and environment across the wide expanses of the Pacific Ocean.
As an agency reporter for Agence France-Presse, Mike Field pitched Pacific issues to the world’s press. An advocate for progress and opponent of the absurd, he has at times been banned from reporting in Tonga, and in Fiji. His approach to reporting issues may cause some to feel angst, but his pursuit of a better Pacific is clearly evident. At a conference in 2008 titled Big Thinking 08, Field suggested the answer to the Pacific-wide failing microsite issues of poor health, weak economies and unjust governments could lie in the creation of a Polynesian-Pacific Union.
Swimming With Sharks is published by Penguin Books and has a RRP of NZ$40.00.
In this book Swimming With Sharks, Field writes: “On the last day, we flew out to Manono aboard an RNZAF Iroquois. The doors were open and the beauty of Samoa was literally beneath our feet. I have always known it to be a fragile kind of place: tsunamis, like all the other disasters, big and small, show that we have a pact with nature to enjoy ‘paradise’. Sometimes nature reasserts supremacy and paradise becomes a nightmare…
“The South Pacific is in the midst of calamitous times. Even now, shops burn and people die in anti-Chinese riots in Papua New Guinea, reporters are censored in Fiji, and countries like the Solomon Islands and Tonga live in non-democratic twilight zones: one occupied by foreign powers, the other controlled by an ageing bachelor king. It is a region ravaged by ongoing tragedy, both natural and man-made.”
This book, Swimming With Sharks – Tales From The South Pacific Frontline is a must read for anyone who has an interest in this part of the world that is so often forgotten by the globe’s superpowers, until the consequences of instability and poverty knock on their doors.
The following is how publishers Penguin Books describe Mike Field’s latest work:
- Swimming with Sharks is roving reporter Michael Field’s absorbing account of first-hand experiences within this historic unrest. Rich with anecdotes from 30 years of living and working in the region, this timely book is at once an investigation of the Pacific’s recent political history, a collection of disarmingly frank, pieced-together memories, and a window into the Pacific’s illusory, often indescribable way of life.
Michael Field has been a newspaper and agency reporter for 35 years, mostly covering the South Pacific. He is banned in four Pacific countries including Fiji. A former Agence France-Presse correspondent, he now works for Fairfax Media and has been a commentator on Radio New Zealand National’s ‘Nine to Noon’ for over a decade. His previous books include a landmark study of Samoa’s independence movement, the Mau, which led New Zealand to formally apologise, and an account of Fiji’s coups. Often in India or the South Pacific, Field’s home base is Auckland.
Selwyn Manning is co-editor of Scoop Media (www.scoop.co.nz) and acting editor of Pacific Scoop. He is also completing a Master of Communication Studies degree at AUT University in Auckland.
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I really enjoyed Michaels book on the Mau and look forward to reading this next one. More power to your elbow!
I am really looking forward to reading Mike’s “SWS”….He’s an honest and ethical man (these characteristics of Mike drives and influecnes his work as a journalist). He always seeks the turth and tell it as he sees it…I remember him back during our days at Forum meetings in the 1990s…He and Robert Keith Reid were a team to watch/enjoy…Mike truly cares about the Pacific Islands and Pacific people..I admired his courage and determination to let the world knows that all is not well in so-called ‘Paradise” (as seen from an outsider’s view…)…
Regarding comments about Robert Louis Stevenson in a newspaper article re your new book, namely the Dom Post 31/7/10, I wonder if you realize that he was tested for T B at Saranac Lakes, in the Adironondaks U S A in 1887 by Dr Trudeau with NEGATIVE results . In her book
‘ Myself and the other fellow’ Claire Harman on page 332 states that American researchers believe that not only R L S but also his mother and her father suffered from OSTER-RENDU-WEBER SYNDROME.
I am very interested in the book as I was told there is a story of my father about his odeal in world war two on Ocean Island. I still want to see the journalist who wrote this story and wish to thank him as he did write correctly of what he has been informed by my father. I want to ask question
that who was the intepreter or a translator from Kiribati into English for the journalist. Thank you
I write this comment again to ask for anyone who could help in locating where I could find the book authored by Michael Field, and most of all of where I could meet the journalist. I believed he is very busy and tight up with his tremendous work and I wish he could kindly drop some lines to indicate where I could find the book and where I could see him in person.
Banned from 4 Pacific Countries…with the inaccurate and biased articles, I am not surprised…just today i read an article about a Pacific Island govt written by him claiming that a particular person was harassed by govt officials…later, in the evening the same guy spoke on the national news and said the article written by Field was absolutely incorrect….
This guy needs to grow up and start reporting facts and not put his personal agenda as news…Journalism will always suck with such people around
Abel, better check this review done by a Pacific Islander in 31 July 2010 Pacific Scoop:
http://pacific.scoop.co.nz/2010/07/engaging-witty-but-fails-to-tell-how-fiji-democracy-betrayed-its-citizens/
He’s my senior brother and used to force me to sit in the back of the little trike we owned while he was at the controls, but over the years even I have come to appreciate his democratic spirit !