This once respected journalist on Pacific Affairs seems bent on destroying his own reputation for independent, informed and balanced commentary by a stream of one-sided, highly personalised articles on Fiji. He also seems to have launched himself on a personal crusade against Bainimarama.
Witness, for example, his latest comment "Warrant to Arrest:Fiji." This could have been an informed account of the Fiji Registrar of the High Court taking files from the offices of the Fiji Law Society. It could also, legitimately, have used words such as "raided," "seized," "in plain clothes," and linked the incident to post-Abrogration clamp downs, including Government's surprise last-minute cancellation of Mahendra Chaudhry's meeting with cane farmer unionists in Labasa, reported on Coupfourpointfive. With Field's past knowledge of Fiji and Chaudhry, his opinions on possible reasons for this cancellation, and the one earlier in Lautoka, could have left us better informed on the intricacies and minefields of Fiji politics.
Instead, he starts his "comment" with a hyperbolic comparison between Bainimarama and Burmese generals, Robert Mugabe and Augusto Pinocet, dictators responsible for the deaths of many thousands. He then proceeds to warn Bainimarama, who like Pinochet apparently also suffers a heart condition, that he may soon be unable to travel overseas for treatment. These -- one would think irrelevant -- side swipes lead to an short account of the Court Registrar, Ana Rokomakoti, uplifting Fiji Law Society records for investigation. Field claimed to know she had no valid search warrant, and seemed to infer that because she was an army lawyer she should not also be the Registrar. This is an important story that may (or may not) be further evidence of unnecessary (or necessary) Government clamp-downs, Fiji Law Society intransigence, or both or neither. The opportunity was lost. Field preferred venom to vigour.
Here are three examples of the sort of argument and language he used. "She does this, nominally at least, as Registrar of the High Court. But no one is overlooking the fact that she is a Major in the Fiji Military and is subservient to its head, the self appointed dictator of Fiji ..."
"When the military are raiding lawyers, there is no justice left ..."
"... sending some major into lawyers’ offices is military routine."
Read the whole article on Field's website or on Intelligentsiya's blog.
This man, with many years of Pacific experience, produces a warped view of an important event, and not for the first time. Last year the NZ Broadcasting Standards Authority agreed his comments against then Fiji attorney-general Christopher Pryde on a March 7 broadcast were an "uneducated, ill-informed, deeply biased, unbalanced, and false account of recent events in Fiji." For more such comments, most of which contain highly personal, insulting, and one would think libellous remarks about almost every current pro-Government figure, click this page of his website.
This is what he says about himself in his blog (my underlining):
"Published author on the Pacific, including the definitive account on Samoa’s independence struggle and Fiji ’s coup culture.
Radio New Zealand National Radio commentator on Pacific affairs and sought by international media for an intimate knowledge of the history, politics, characters and issues of the region.
It is not a pleasant task pulling someone down from their former high heights, but New Zealanders need to be better served by their journalists if they are ever to understand even a little of what is happening in Fiji. Field's personal attacks on individuals may befit a blogger, but not a responsible journalist.
P.S. Please click on the comments from Alterego criticizing parts of this post. The photo above is the "real" Mr Field. Thanks, Alterego.
8 comments:
The image in this post is of Peter Williams QC (Ballu Khan's lawyer) ... the picture was taken by Michael Field, not of him.
You obviously just pulled the image straight off an image search without checking the page it came from (or your rights to republish it)
You do yourself no favours ... you comment widely on the interplay between Fiji and the media, yet are unable to recognise one player from another ... and seem not to have done your reading either.
You are quite right, Alterego. I should have checked more carefully but Field's website had no caption. I assumed it was him. The photo is now removed.
I should also acknowledge sources of photos but this is very tedious and I doubt any harm is done by my omission. It's hard enough finding the correct photo -- as you have revealed. Being a one-man publisher has problems.
Thanks once again for keeping me on my toes.
Croz
In the interests of completeness, I believe there's a photograph of Field at the bottom of this page.
I think Field's propensity to exaggeration and grandstanding detracts from the valid points he may make.
Case in point: the recent TV interview in which he said Fiji had all the ingredients for civil war and proceeded to name a half dozen factions that would make it so. A multiplicity of competing political and social factions is exactly why Fiji is not a candidate for civil war: they can't agree long enough to form common enemies.
But for the sake of balance:
1. the article you reference above is clearly labelled as an opinion piece (rather than a news report)
2. Field has a slightly different interpretation of the BSA ruling
Michael Field is referred to as 'uneducated.....' in one comment. This is nonsense. He is educated, we must assume, and therefore he ought to know better. He ought to know better about many things concerning Fiji, Fiji's history, who lives in Fiji, who has invested in Fiji and for how many generations some of us have resided in and contributed to Fiji. He knows zilch about this and it is more than evident from his scribbling. Scribbling? Yes, because that is all he does. Why would ANYONE pay this man to write? He does not know what 'writing' is. Based on this, no one should give anything he scribbles any credence whatsoever.
The Seventh Generation
Yes I concur the photograph is authentic.
Why not try Michael Field out on corruption in Fiji? Does he have a clue? Over all these years that he has perambulated the Pacific would he have an inkling that "all was not well in Paradise"? Would he care? Would he consider corruption at all levels of Fiji society and business something that might require further investigation? I doubt it. Too much trouble. And ditto for the Fiji media. They have been conspicuously silent and lazy about following through on corruption even when it was taking place under their very noses. They have frequently been "pointed in the right direction" but have chosen to remain on their perches. So much safer; so much easier than doing "the very hard yards". Might it be too much to suggest that these same people have colluded in the corruption which exists and is now endemic? What might they have done differently? Think about it.
In 2005 Fiji was rated at 4 on the Transparency International Corruption Perception Index. Where would it sit now? Does anyone care? Perhaps closer to India and Bangladesh (which suffered a coup d'etat in November 2006 attributed also to corruption)at 2 or 2.5? Why has this simple indicator failed to impress us? Any of us?
Would Michael Field now care to tell us what he knows about corruption in Fiji over the past decade or so? Should he fail to reply, it must mean that he knows:
Nothing
Has not made it his business to find out
Does not care
Is allegedly 'corrupt' or has colluded in corruption himself?
Are any of the above comments relevant? Yes they are: all of them.
Mr Field is ignorant, we must assume, or deliberately desultory in his duty to his profession as an investigative reporter. I do not recall ever seeing him in all the years he is supposed to have roved the Pacific Islands. Any reporter who has failed to take a direct interest in corruption in Fiji, to investigate it or to speak face-to-face with people who are dealing with corruption and evidence of corruption is a fraud (of a reporter, that is). Willy-nilly, his focus and his proper attention were wanting.
Wake Up, Michael Field! Wake up, Barbara Dreaver and others like you. You missed your opportunity and you might have saved us all a whole lot of grief. Only NZTV has bothered to appear on the ground this year to some positive effect: during the Nadi/Ba Floods. Too late to wring your wrists now but you are not likely to do that either, are you?
VII Generation
It is unfortunate indeed that Michael Field has tarnished his own reputation. For a number of years following the 2000 Coup, he seemed to be one of the small number of Fiji commentators who was more than just a parachute journalist. Following his expulsion by the Bainimarama regime, that all seems to have gone west. Sad. The NZBSA remark about "uneducated" clearly referred to the piece in question, not to Field himself. But an educated man, as another correspondent remarked, has an obligation to seek the facts and present them in as fair and unbiased a manner as he can. Field seems to have stopped doing so. It is to be hoped he can find his way back, and stop being so blinded by his indignation at his expulsion. Something a bit like this seems to also have been happening to Sean Dorney, and for the same reason. It seems these people have such a view of themselves that they cannot entertain the idea that perhaps their expulsions were because they overstepped the boundaries of at least common sense in deliberately pulling the beard of what is well-understood to be a humourless and paranoid regime.
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