Naver News Discusses Utilizing Hundreds of 'Full Dan' for Media Entry and Exit Management

Naver is considering utilizing a pool of hundreds of members when reviewing media companies for news partnerships, sanctions, and expulsions.

According to industry sources on the 30th, the Naver News Innovation Forum recently discussed introducing a pool system in the media review process. From a pool consisting of hundreds of media experts and others, dozens of reviewers would be randomly selected to evaluate media companies for partnership or expulsion.

Forum members reportedly agreed that having a larger pool would enhance fairness and objectivity. Currently, the News Partnership Evaluation Committee (NPEC) operates with 30 members from 15 organizations, selecting only some as reviewers. However, concerns have been raised about potential lobbying due to the exposure of reviewers' personal information.

The News Innovation Forum is reviewing detailed plans regarding the institutions and number of members to be included in the pool and is also discussing management measures for a ‘NPEC 2.0’ system aimed to launch within the year.

However, even if NPEC 2.0 is launched within the year, revising the media partnership and sanction review regulations to fit the current media environment will be necessary, so actual operation is expected to take more time. Existing review regulations base media partnership evaluations on one year’s worth of articles and set major sanctions on issues like duplicate article transmissions that have already disappeared, which has been criticized as not aligning with the current media situation.

Since its launch in 2015, the Naver-Kakao NPEC has played a role in determining media companies to partner with portals and news services, but controversies over fairness in review, sanctions, and expulsion criteria, as well as ideological bias among members, have persisted, leading to a temporary suspension of activities in May last year.

With no new partnerships being formed and complaints from emerging media companies, Kakao decided to introduce a 100% quantitative evaluation method for media company partnerships on the Daum News portal starting next month, replacing the NPEC.

A Naver official said, "The News Innovation Forum is discussing various proposals to resume the NPEC," adding, "Once specific plans are finalized, they will be officially announced."