The Full Story of QC

T​he British journalist Michael Leidig once spent eight years fighting for the right to be heard over a false story published by unregulated media bodies about his international press agency.

When he took the matter to court, the stories and social media attacks continued, and with no-one to put forward his side of the story, he was denied his day in court when the judges refused to send it to trial.

Since then he has been on a Kafkaesque journey through labyrinthine complaints procedures where these unregulated media outlets insisted they had done nothing wrong.

This is the story about the creation of QC, set up to tackle this one-sided system and a regulator that holds the guardians to account without waiting for the other side to accept accountability.

T​​he expression ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes’ means ‘Who guards the guardians’, and to understand why QC is taking on the unguarded guardians of ‘truth’ then you must first understand the damage an irresponsible media outlet can do.

In Michael Leidig’s case, his fully sustainable and independent news agency was about to scale up to become the non-profit Fourth Estate Project. But on the eve of the project’s launch, everything collapsed when his agency was falsely, accused of running a fake news factory.

His investigations bureau was forced to close down and a network of local media sites were forced to go offline, while investors vanished.

I​f Buzzfeed and The Guardian, which printed the false allegations, had been regulated like most mainstream outlets, the matter could have been resolved quickly with independent arbitration. But they allow their own staff to decide if they made a mistake, and in the case of the Scott Trust, owners of The Guardian, they waited a year before they even told anyone of their decision.

Meanwhile, the unchallenged allegations apply considerable unfair influence on courts and legal proceedings, resulting in a damaging effect on legal processes.

QC intends to challenge what they and any unregulated media do, and will not stop until they do the decent thing and join an independent press regulator so they can be made to honour the standards they demand of others.

These organisations need to be reminded that the media is a double-edged sword, with the power to damage those who try to use it for their own benefit just as much as it can damage those they seek to expose. It has the power to cast down a reputation, strip away public admiration and turn the limelight into a spotlight that leaves no hiding place.