By Oh Young-jin
Is portal king Naver a news outlet?
The portal where readers get more news than from any other single news organization doesn't want to be classified as such because it would be subject to the stringent rules applied to newspapers and broadcasters.
But a look at its display of news about Wednesday's summit between President Moon Jae-in and U.S. President Donald Trump makes one wonder whether Naver can avoid the media label any longer.
Under the "Korea-U.S. Summit" heading on its website comes the top article by Yonhap News Agency, whose headline reads "Leaders of Korea, U.S. (agree) to work for the success of North Korea-U.S. summit, to resolve the North's anxiety about its regime survival."
The second is another Yonhap article, whose headline says, "Moon on thin ice _ can he bring a big deal on the U.S.-North Korea summit?"
The third item is the conservative Chosun Ilbo article whose headline says, "Two leaders apart about the North's behavior regarding its summit with the U.S."
These headlines indicated the outcome of the Moon-Trump summit ended business as usual, all but ignoring Trump's bombshell statement that there was substantial chance the Singapore summit with the North may not take place unless his conditions are met.
That is the first remark made by Trump about the possibility of no summit with the North.
Although the anti-North Korean Chosun's headline on Naver looked vague, that article moved from one containing Trump's comment about no summit without the North meeting his conditions. Naver didn't pick that.
At the time of this layout on Naver, two other widely read vernacular newspapers _ the Joongang Ilbo and the Donga Ilbo _ had the Trump ultimatum as their main website articles.
Most foreign media outlets chose the same angle as the two conservative newspapers, which, with the Chosun, do not back the progressive Moon government. .
The Kyunghyang, a progressive paper, highlighted in its paper edition Trump's intention to conduct the summit with Kim without a hitch, while another progressive outlet, the Hankyoreh, focused on Trump's conciliatory stance on the North's staged denuclearization.
Going back to the original question about Naver's identity, there can be a couple of arguments reflecting its treatment of the summit news.
First, there is no doubt that it did choose the articles and decided where they were placed _ that is layout, part of editorial decision making, a key function for a news organization.
By the tenor of the articles' headlines, Naver can be seen as trying to place its ideological tilt toward neutral or progressive. That is part of a news outlet's editorial policy.
The result of its coverage can be seen as an effort not to rub the government the wrong way, considering the Moon administration's efforts to make the Trump-Kim summit a success.
Finally, it failed to get the news to readers by picking articles with obfuscating headlines or ignoring ones with "call a spade a spade" headlines. This means Naver is not a good news manager.
Naver claims it produces little original reporting and its job is to display articles from affiliated news organizations.
But when it decides which articles to display and where they will be, it is already playing the role of a news organization. Throw in its enormous power as a trader of news, and it is time to apply to Naver the same rules and scrutiny that cover other media organizations.
Naver is facing calls for change in the way it deals with news as an aggregator and distributor after it was revealed that it manipulated the layout and its news service was used to support a certain political party.
It came up with measures to make its news service less conspicuous and allow member news entities to lay out its news page. It also expressed a willingness to give up the current "instant article" system of enabling readers to see articles on Naver without "out-linking," or going back to the website of the news outlets where the articles originate.
Naver's offer is looked on with suspicion, with critics saying it is nothing but a trick to allow the portal to survive the latest scandal while keeping its current system intact.
What I am suggesting is to make Naver a news organization and have it compete with other outlets rather than allowing it to maintain a dominant status over them. That will help take excessive power from the portal and provide a level playing field for all news organizations, Naver included, to compete.
Oh Young-jin (foolsdie@gmail.com, foolsdie5@ktimes.com) is the digital managing editor of The Korea Times.
