Naver News Partnership Committee to Begin New Partnership Reviews from March 3

Naver announced on the 20th that, starting from March 3 next month, it will begin accepting new applications for news content partnerships and search partnerships through its Naver News Partnership information page.

Naver News Partnership Committee. Provided by Naver

The Naver News Partnership Committee (hereinafter the Committee) held the "Naver News Partnership Committee Policy Briefing" at the Korea Press Center in Jung-gu, Seoul, on the same day and announced new regulations for partnership review and operational evaluation.

The Committee will be composed of the Policy Committee, the Partnership Review Committee, the Operational Evaluation Committee, and the Appeal Review Committee. It will also establish a diversity task force (TF) to explore measures to reinvigorate local media, among other initiatives.

The partnership review and operational evaluation regulations established by the Policy Committee focus on contributing to the creation of an environment where the value of journalism is respected, and on ensuring procedural legitimacy, fairness, and reliability.

The Partnership Review Committee will be in charge of reviewing new applications for news content partnerships and search partnerships. Partnership reviews are scheduled to be conducted once a year, with a maximum of 50 points each for quantitative and qualitative evaluations.

The quantitative evaluation will comprehensively examine basic requirements for providing news services, such as news production capacity and the current state of media outlet operations. Only media outlets that meet the quantitative evaluation criteria will proceed to the qualitative evaluation, which will be conducted using a review method that reflects the evaluators' respective areas of expertise. Through this, the Committee expects to secure fairness and expertise throughout the entire review process.

The Operational Evaluation Committee will be responsible for evaluating the operations of existing Naver partner media outlets. The Operational Evaluation Committee will hold regular monthly meetings to continuously monitor whether partner media outlets are complying with the regulations and will assign evaluation scores based on the results.

In addition, if an objection is filed regarding the results of a partnership review or operational evaluation, the Appeal Review Committee will be convened to conduct deliberations. Media outlets may file objections regarding procedural violations, errors, or omitted explanations through the independently constituted Appeal Review Committee.

Members of the Partnership Review Committee and the Operational Evaluation Committee will be randomly selected for each evaluation session from a "candidate pool of committee members," consisting of former members of bodies that conduct reviews and evaluations related to media coverage, such as the Media Diversity Committee, the Audience Rating Survey Committee, the Korea Press Ethics Commission, and the Internet Newspaper Ethics Committee, as well as former members of reader and viewer committees operated by media outlets that meet certain requirements.

Choi Sungjoon, Chairperson of the Committee, said, "Based on the newly established 'Naver News Partnership Review and Operational Evaluation Regulations,' we will focus our efforts on ensuring the fairness, independence, and professionalism of the news service," adding, "We will operate the entire review and evaluation process in a transparent and fair manner."