Chairs are scattered in amongst the room of 200 desks. The team of PM reporters and journalists gather together for a meeting in the ABC News and Current Affairs room at Ultimo. The executive producer of PM, Ed Roy, plonks a plastic bag full of white powder (which turns out to be baking flour) on his desk.
From across the room, one of the staff members makes a subtle joke about the substance, warning Ed that he shouldn’t inject it all at once.
Pointing to the bag, someone else says: “That’ll get you 22 death penalties in Singapore.”
Coming from Peter Lloyd, the irony isn’t lost on those in the room. Peter is the ABC’S former South East Asia Foreign Correspondent – and he made headlines when he spent seven months in Changi Prison on drug offences after he was sentenced in December 2008.
Inside Story
Spending a couple of hours with the now senior reporter with Radio Current Affairs, I realise that no topic is off limits with Peter. Having written Inside Story in 2010, an inside look at his experience with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and imprisonment for drug possession in Singapore’s most notorious jail, this was to be expected. But for a person who appreciates their privacy, Inside Story was a step outside of Peter’s comfort zone.
“I wrote it for two reasons,” Peter says. “One was because, when it happened, I didn’t say anything. And it was the wrong time to say anything. When I came back I wanted to put my story in a full perspective and full context – and the way to do that was to write a book. There was a lot going on that people didn’t know about and there was a lot going on that people did know about which was my private life unveiled. [It’s something] I didn’t really want to happen.”
At the time of his arrest in 2008, Peter’s story was splashed all over the Australian news. Many were aware that the journalist was in possession of 0.4 grams of methamphetamine, or ice, a smoking pipe and six syringes when he was facing charges of drug trafficking and possession which could have landed him in prison for 20 years and given 15 strokes of the cane. Peter’s sexuality also came to the fore, with many media outlets reporting on his relationship with a Malay-Singaporean man.
However, at the time, few knew of the PTSD that Peter was suffering. It had yet to be diagnosed and Peter says it is the reason behind his use of a methamphetamine. He says this trauma developed after reporting on situations of mass casualties such as the Bali Bombings, Thailand Tsunami and the suicide bombing that killed Benazir Bhutto. According to Peter, it was a Pandora’s Box just waiting to be opened.
“So it’s not that I really didn’t have a choice, but I was already naked, so why not be naked on my terms?” Peter says about revealing all in his book.
“There was another thing going on that I realised after what happened to me,” Peter says. He argues that mental health issues, such as PTSD, are not spoken of among journalists and those working in the media sector. Reporting on stories of mass casualties is something which journalists, and foreign correspondents in particular, have to face everyday. He says that this can take a toll on the individual: “Journalism takes prisoners, and it’s us sometimes.”
Peter and the ABC Board
According to Peter, the ABC Mental Health Board has not approached him – the ABC’s most high profile case of PTSD – for a contribution or for his ideas on how to prevent journalism from holding even more of these “prisoners” captive.
“The ABC needs to be pressured into being more up to date with current thinking on PTSD,” Peter says.
Currently, the Board’s processes largely revolve around a policy response called “peer support”. This means that a senior journalist – such as five-time Walkley Award winner and Foreign Affairs Editor for the ABC, Peter Cave – is available to colleagues overseas to discuss their issues.
Peter Lloyd adds: “But he is not a professional, he is not qualified, he is not a psychologist. It is a flawed system with proven problems which the ABC doesn’t acknowledge.”
ABC News, in collaboration with the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma, developed the ABC’s Trauma Awareness Program back in June 2007, a year before Peter was in Changi. The program is based on a three tier approach: peer support group training, manager awareness and staff awareness.
It is about this structure that Peter plans to make a public statement, arguing that cases such as his own PTSD and the trauma he experienced may have been prevented if such a model of support was not in place.
The aftermath
In the middle of the News and Current Affairs room, sitting back on a red lounge, the change is Peter’s tone is apparent. In this beehive of activity that is the ABC newsroom, he seems somewhat reminiscent. Peter is more contemplative when talking about his work-related PTSD.
“Journalism has changed. When I began in 1988, it was a beginning of a period where we became targets in conflict. In the 1990s Balkans War, journos were targets. And that wasn’t always so. In Vietnam, we weren’t targets. But we were targets in the Gulf War because we were a government that was part of the alliance. So a lot of people have been killed, and the International Journalism Federation keeps an online track of the issues with reportage.
“We’re kind of unwilling participants and we’re also, in the online digital age, required to do things that, 20 years ago, we weren’t expected to do in terms of how often we’re on air, how often we have to file. The stress levels have gone right up. And on top of that, we’ve also, in the last 10 years, lived through a period of mass casualty and disaster violence. We are reporting on the deaths of people in large numbers and we’re there, we’re present. Our presence is highly dangerous, but it’s required and it has an effect.”
Peter looks at foreign correspondence and journalism in general as not simply a job, but a vocation.
“But at the end of the day,” he says, “no career or vocation is worth falling in love with. I still have scar tissue because of it. If you break your leg, there’s scar tissue. And I am not the same person, I carry the scar tissue with me. But at the end of the day, it is just scar tissue, it is not a current or recurrent experience. The trauma is something which is just there; it’s very nuanced.”
The writing process
Having spent over 24 years writing radio scripts and doing on air pieces to camera, the experience of writing a memoir was quite different for Peter. He says the process was somewhat therapeutic and cathartic.
Locking himself away in a cottage up the coast at Blueys Beach, Peter spent October through to December of 2009, after his release from Changi, writing Inside Story.
“I don’t know what it’s like to write any other book. But I wrote it very fast. It was almost like a photographic recall. When you have a traumatic experience, they’re embedded in a way that other experiences aren’t. When I thought about that event, I was able to see it almost as a cinematic viewing so I could access what it looked like and felt like. But it was a safe way to do it: a bit of distance and a bit of counselling which made it a safe experience to look back at.
“Writing about it is like expelling it, getting it out. I found it very cathartic and a lot of other people have said they’ve had a similar experience.”
Story of a victim?
Many have pondered who the private man behind this story really is, and tried to understand the man behind the reportage. Peter has spoken of his desire not to be defined by his experience in Changi. In an interview on 9th October 2010 on Radio National with Elizabeth Jackson, Peter spoke of his desire to not be seen as a victim. He also spoke of his move away from stories involving victims, to those concerning public policy and foreign affairs.
“It’s a potential grey area,” Peter says. “I don’t want to go back to the same patterns of reporting that got me into that place.
“I try not to be a victim because the one thing I can’t stand about victims … they become consumed by it and defined by it for the rest of their life. I don’t talk to people about this very often and that’s one of the reasons I don’t do it, is because I don’t want to be defined by it.
“It happened, you deal with it, and move on. And I don’t want to be seen for the next 20 years as that guy.”
Before the PM reporters and journalists gathered together for a meeting, I asked executive producer Ed Roy who he thought the real Peter Lloyd is. He told me he filled the role of the coffee addict and staff member who takes the longest lunch breaks, which was greeted by an eye roll from Peter.
ABC’S director of news, Kate Torney told The Australian on the 9 October 2010 “With strong journalistic skills and experience, Peter is a valuable addition to the ABC News team.”
Though the details of his private life have been broadcasted publicly, I still got the feeling that few were allowed to see the Peter laying beneath the years of stories and behind Inside Story.
The best insight was when it was time to wrap up our interview. I asked if, given the chance, he would do things differently.
Peter said: “I’d do it all again. This is the general philosophy of my life: I don’t see any point in going forward with regret of the past because there’s nothing you can do about that and it might colour what goes on in the future.”
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Posted on: 8 February 2012
