Naver to reform news service for transparency

Naver web portal (123rf)

Korean internet giant Naver said Friday it would introduce a set of news service policies to enhance transparency and impartiality, with the intention of preventing defamatory media reports and strengthening measures againsts users who leave comments that violate election laws.

To protect users who have suffered defamation or infringement of their rights due to media reports, Naver will provide easier access to request corrections and respond to articles online. The company will create a separate banner and page on March 28 to inform users of the changes and to increase accessibility.

When requesting information be corrected, Naver will label articles with the phrase "requesting corrected information be made," without the deliberation of legal organizations, and it will strongly urge the media to temporarily close comment sections for related articles.

Currently, media damage relief is primarily handled by the Press Arbitration Commission. Criticism is already being raised among local media on the upcoming scheme as opening the way for news portal operators to arbitrarily intervene in the process and infringe upon editorial rights. All such labeled news may be effectively branded as "fake news."

In September last year, Naver announced its reorganization plan to expose information on the results of deliberations by related legal organizations such as the Press Arbitration Commission above the text of articles. The upcoming news service reform is take it another one step further.

Regarding the concerns, a Naver official told The Korea Herald that it comes as the company's efforts to minimize infringement of rights caused by media reports and that the decision was made with the recommendations of the News Innovation Forum, an independent advisory body launched in January to discuss reorganization of the Naver News service.

Additionally, Naver will immediately delete users' comments confirmed by the National Election Commission to violate election laws and will restrict commenting rights of those who repeatedly receive such warnings.

To prevent excessive replies to a specific article, the number of comments to an article will be limited to 10 per person. It will also display statistics of commenters on each article, including the ratio of Koreans and foreigners based on identity verification information collected when signing up as a member.

By Jie Ye-eun(yeeun@heraldcorp.com)