National Assembly eyes to improve Naver’s news assessment

Oct 12, 2022, 08:59 am

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Naver headquarters in Pangyo, Gyeonggi Province./ Source: Yonhap News

AsiaToday reporter Chun Hyun-bin

The National Assembly has begun to move to rectify the inappropriate practices of Naver, which is not a media company but enjoys the dominant power over media companies by reviewing and grading their news.

South Korea’s two internet giants Naver and Daum have been running so-called the ‘News Partnership Evaluation Committee’ aimed at reviewing and assessing news of media groups. Some lawmakers, who believe that the standards and practices of the two internet titans for evaluating media companies are unreasonable and harm the independence and growth of the media groups, are trying to come up with a solution, such as enacting related laws.

The practice of rating and grading Korean media companies by creating the stages of ‘news search partnership,’ ‘news stand partnership,’ and ‘news content partnership’ by the evaluation committee is a serious problem that subordinates the media to portals, especially Naver. This is because it prevents the birth and growth of new media, and the development of existing media is determined by the relationship with Naver.

Axios, a 5-year-old American news site, has been sold for $525 million. Many industry observers point out that such a start-up media is impossible to be born in Korea, which is under Naver’s monopolization.

The New York Times has 9.17 million paid subscribers, including 6.14 million digital subscribers, creating a structure where subscription fees exceed advertising revenues and enabling to provide high-quality and in-depth articles to global audience. However, such structure is impossible in Korea, which is dominated by Naver’s ‘partnership’ system.

The political community has suggested Naver abolish its practice of evaluating media companies and grading them into four levels, and provide only news search functions through a fair and open algorithm, while adopting the out-link format which links to a website of the press when a reader clicks on the news.

Back on February 11, then-presidential candidates Yoon Suk-yeol and Lee Jae-myung agreed that portal sites should abolish their news editing system and provide search results in out-link format at a discussion hosted by the Korea Journalists Association.

According to data released by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and Oxford University, 58% of Korean news consumed in a week was delivered via Naver. The figure rises up to a whopping 86% when Daum Kakao is included. It shows that portals, especially Naver, are the dominant power over the media.

In response, lawmakers are forming a consensus that the news partnership evaluation system of portals such as Naver should be abolished.

“It is the time to change Naver’s exclusive news provider status,” said Democratic Party’s Rep. Kim Jong-min. “Regardless of political orientation, several lawmakers agree with this point,” he said. Rep. Kim has already proposed the ‘online platform’ bill, which includes reestablishing the relationship between portals and media outlets.

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