Naver has begun discussions to resume the News Partnership Evaluation Committee, which is currently on a temporary suspension.
According to the ICT industry on the 18th, the Naver News Innovation Forum held a meeting the previous day and reportedly started discussions to resume the Evaluation Committee. It is said that talks about preparatory meetings for the committee's resumption took place during the meeting.
The News Innovation Forum plans to discuss specific matters such as launching a preparatory organization for the committee's resumption over the coming months.
Originally, Naver intended to discuss the composition and operation methods for launching 'Evaluation Committee 2.0' in the first quarter through the News Innovation Forum activities. However, it is observed that discussions only began the day before due to gathering opinions on the necessity of resuming the committee and efforts to expand regional media news within election-related pages.
The Naver and Kakao Evaluation Committees officially launched in October 2015 and announced related regulations in January 2016, but suspended activities temporarily in May last year.
During the committee's operation, controversies over the fairness of news entry screening, sanctions, and expulsion criteria on both platforms persisted, along with ongoing debates about ideological and factional biases among committee members, which led to the suspension.
Despite having strong authority to decide which media outlets partner with the portals and to expel them, the committee was criticized as a 'closed-door screening' for not disclosing meeting minutes, and faced accusations of arbitrary reviews as qualitative evaluations reportedly accounted for 80% of the assessment.
Accordingly, it is expected that measures to strengthen fairness will be discussed in depth regarding Naver Evaluation Committee 2.0.
Kakao also plans to discuss matters related to the Daum News Evaluation Committee. A Kakao official stated, "We are collecting internal and external opinions," and added, "We plan to review various alternatives including the Evaluation Committee and will soon begin discussions on resumption."
It is anticipated that the News Transparency Committee, which was launched last April after the expansion and reorganization of the Kakao Media Advisory Committee, will participate in the discussions. Once alternatives for the Naver and Daum News Evaluation Committees are prepared, the long-suspended screening of news partner media is expected to resume.
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