Michael Grade said the BBC should set the "gold standard" in news

But the BBC must not soften its agenda in response to heated competition and pressure to win ratings, he said.

In a speech on Monday, he said BBC staff had faced a choice of whether to deliver serious news or chase ratings.

But the two were compatible, he said, adding that the BBC should aim to "make the important interesting".

Mr Grade said news providers had become "beset by increased competition, declining audiences and fragmenting revenues".

Mr Grade praised BBC reporter Rachel Harvey's tsunami reports

"One result is that serious news values are coming under increasing strain," he told the Hugh Cudlipp lecture at the London College of Communications.

"The BBC may indeed have unwittingly contributed to this by the emphasis on audience accessibility in news in recent years.

"This may have created a tension - on the one hand the expectation that editors should deliver the traditional, serious BBC news agenda. On the other, a perceived pressure on editors to win audiences - with the result that a certain confusion may have taken root about which was the right road to follow.

"But of course it's not a case of one or the other - of serious journalism or serious ratings. It is a counsel of despair to believe that serious journalism is incapable of being popular journalism."

The BBC had a duty to set the "gold standard" in news reporting, accuracy, impartiality and creating better understanding, he said.