The Democratic Party of Korea will officially promote changes to remove news editing from web portals like Naver and Daum (first covered in the July 17, 2021 issue of the Kyunghyang Shinmun). By having users instead of web portals select the news from media outlets, the ruling party plans to rectify the sensational reporting of media outlets, which occurred when they were dependent on web portals. Reportedly, Naver has agreed to this measure, while Daum plans to make a decision according to future social consensus.

In the first report by the Democratic Party of Korea’s special committee for media innovation on June 17, the party’s leader Song Young-gil said, “We will take the right to edit the news from web portals and return it to the people, allowing users to determine their media outlets.” Song said, “Most of the members of the press have not been able to say anything, but they are forced to rely on web portals and are at their disposal.” He further explained, “In the case of Naver and Daum, there was a need to resolve the problem of the portals editing and determining the news, despite that they did not create those articles.” Song referred to the web portals as the “Naver newspaper” and the “Daum newspaper.”

Kim Yong-min, chair of the special media committee said, “Web portals unilaterally editing and displaying the news is no different from people all reading one newspaper. This actually restricts and infringes the freedom of the press.” He also said, “We will review and improve the system so that the press does not focus on selling headlines to get selected by web portals and dive into a competition for clicks instead of a competition of sound arguments.”

The special media committee also considered having web portals disclose their algorithms as a way to reform the media. But disclosing the algorithm would hold the web portals legally accountable for practically playing the role of a media outlet. This could raise concerns about the state trying to control web portals, and realistically it is difficult to establish standards on appropriate algorithms. So the committee decided to have web portals give up their right to edit the news instead.

According to the special medial committee, Naver agreed to main idea of abandoning its role as news editor. Meanwhile, there were different opinions inside Daum, so the company plans to keep an eye on future social discussions. Kim Seung-won, vice chairman of the special media committee met with reporters and said, “Naver has set the direction of its company management policy (to giving users the right to select their news),” and also conveyed, “Daum is having internal discussions on the news displayed on the portal’s main page based on artificial intelligence. They are willing to remove their news editing function if there is a social consensus to get rid of this function.”

This day, the special media committee also reported to Song on the introduction of punitive damages to restore the damage from fake news and distorted news coverage. Punitive damages are compensations amounting to 3-5 times the damage from intentional and malicious press coverage of fake or fabricated news, and it will be enforced on media outlets. However, if the subject of the coverage is an elected public official or executives of major companies, punitive damages will only be enforced when there exists a malicious purpose. Also, if media outlets are found to have undergone a sufficient verification process, they will be exempt from punitive damages. Kim said, “We will make sure that the new measures do not weaken the press’s function of keeping an eye on power and keeping it in check.”

This day, the ruling party also received a report on measures to exclude any intervention from the government and ruling party in the governance of public broadcasting companies like KBS, MBC and EBS. The idea is to get rid of the power to recommend presidential candidates of the broadcasting companies exercised by the government and ruling party in the past. The special media committee said, “We are considering gathering a panel to recommend directors and presidents with public participation,” and added, “The press report about recommendations from civic groups is different from fact.”

The special media committee plans to promote relevant legislation within this month if possible. Kim said, “Since we put top priority on restoring damages caused by fake and fabricated information, we will first proceed with this.” He further said, “The other two issues need to be deliberated further, so we plan to proceed with those right away afterwards.”