One of the dark sides of Korean society is that there are many unprofessional, unethical ― to be more exact, corrupt ― and substandard news media outlets. They take the forms of newspapers, magazines and Internet news sites, but lack the high-level quality and integrity required of sound, healthy journalism.

There are many expressions describing them ― pseudo-journalism, yellow journalism, pulp media and journalism and extortionist journalism.

Whatever term is used, they engage in exaggeration, overdramatization, scandal-mongering and sensationalism and rely on unnamed sources, faked information, misleading headlines and groundless allegations.

Of these, extortionist journalism is among the worst. They publish, for instance, negative stories about a company or its CEO ― the most vulnerable targets are tycoons who head the family-controlled conglomerates ― and demand hush money or advertisements in return for retracting the stories.

A recent poll conducted by a national advertisers association demonstrates the gravity of the situation: It found 86.4 percent of the surveyed suffered some form of harassment and extortion regarding news reports.

It is not hard to imagine that these apparent acts of extortion and harassment, and other pseudo-journalism activities, flourish especially on the Internet, where they get easy access to a large audience.

They particularly take advantage of portal sites like Naver and Daum Kakao, where news is one of the most important forms of information available. For instance, one of their most common tactics is to press their potential victims by saying, “Our story goes to Naver and Daum Kakao.”

So the two giant portal sites inadvertently have become a platform for many pseudo-news media outlets: The two firms take news from media outlets ― Naver has 400 such partners and Daum Kakao 1,100. But the two firms each pay only 70 of them, including The Korea Herald.

The two firms have faced persistent calls to address the problem. They came up with a proposal last week: They will commission an independent committee to screen the media outlets to be eligible for news partnerships. The panel will also be asked to draw up guidelines for telling legitimate news stories from products of pseudo-journalism.

Naver and Daum Kakao suggested that the panel include representatives and experts from relevant media and journalism organizations, to launch by the end of this year.

There is criticism that the two juggernauts that benefit hugely from news content acquired with little or no money are not addressing the problem head on, but passing the buck to the media industry.

Nevertheless, the proposal is worth following up on because it is an urgent task to filter out pseudo-media outlets and content from the portals. As for the panel’s representation, it would be worth considering including advertisers and consumers.

There are 18,000 media outlets registered with the government, 6,000 of which are online-based. Many of these engage in corrupt activities in the name of journalism. The efforts to drive out pseudo-media should start by cleansing the two major portals of substandard, unethical online media.

It is hoped that the efforts to clean up the online media market inspires the traditional media industry and government officials to take the same actions.