The government is considering expanding media law to regulate Internet companies publishing news stories on their Web sites, officials at the Ministry of Culture and Tourism said.
There has been a lengthy debate among Internet companies and print media over the boundaries of Web-based journalism, with the offline news outlets demanding their online rivals should be bound by the same legal framework.
The Culture Ministry is looking to rewrite the current media law and define Internet companies as news corporations, according to the officials Wednesday.
The ministry will hold a public hearing on the issue Aug. 17 and discuss it with the Cabinet before announcing the draft of the new media law sometime next month. The Websites of offline newspapers will also be regulated under the new law, they said.
"With their growing influence, it is reasonable that Internet portals should carry the same public responsibility as other news outlets. It is important that they be regulated under the law for press arbitration," said a ministry spokesman.
Should the law go through, portals will hold the same legal responsibility as the newspapers they bought stories from when disputes occur over articles they post on Websites.
As more people use Internet portals and search engines rather than television and newspapers as their main news source, there has been a growing debate on whether Internet companies should be regulated under media law.
With Korea among the leaders in Internet penetration, Internet companies including NHN (www.naver.com) and Daum (www.daum.net) have an increasing role in news distribution.
However, Internet companies had been balking at calls for stronger self-regulation, insisting they should not be asked to carry the same weight of responsibility as traditional media outlets as they do not create news stories themselves but only publish articles bought from corporate partners.
The increasing role of Internet portals in news distribution has forced newspapers and broadcasters to change business methods in recent years. Media groups are now investing heavily in creating Web pages to help offline readership move online.
However, fierce competition brought on by the old media only seems to have strengthened the market position of portals.
According to Rankey.com (www.rankey.com), an Internet consultancy which surveyed over 800 Internet sites that publish news, the news readers of Naver averaged about 5 million visitors per month last year.
In comparison, the Web page of the country's most circulated daily newspaper, the Chosun Ilbo, averaged about 650,000 monthly visitors during the same period.
