BBC director general Mark Thompson has launched a range of initiatives designed to improve and make more accessible the corporation's political reporting as part of a wider dialogue aimed at "restoring trust in British public life".

Thompson acknowledged comments made by former Prime Minister Tony Blair last June in which he suggested that the relationship between the media and people in public life had been damaged. Thompson resisted, however, any suggestion that the problems would disappear either by tighter regulation of the press or by offering politicians softer interviews.

"It's difficult to see how any new regulation consistent with press freedom could significantly address the ills he listed that day," Thompson said. "And if my diagnosis of the problem is right tighter regulation might actually increase rather than decrease public distrust."

He added: "It's sometimes suggested that the solution to the problem of trust would be to tone down some of our interviewing.

"If only people like John Humphrys and Nick Robinson and Jeremy Paxman were less aggressive, the public's confidence in politics and politicians would be restored and their cynicism would evaporate.

"Well, not on my watch. I don't believe that the public want to see less rigour in our questioning of politicians and other public figures: if anything, they want to see more."

The initiatives unveiled today will see the BBC create "the world's most creative multimedia portal" to offer comprehensive political news and analysis to UK secondary schools. It also plans to change its political coverage to "make output which explores ideas about policy and policy choices rather than simply react to what's been said and also try harder to expose serious spin", and output scheduling will be adjusted so that more time will be available to offer in-depth set pieces on a number of stories during the year.

Thompson said that the BBC - which has itself suffered with issues of trust over the last year due to repeated instances of competition fakery - was best placed to kick start the process of examining how the trust deficit can be addressed.

"In my view this is not a crisis," he said, "but it is a real problem with real consequences. It arises less from doubts about the motives of people in public life, more from an anxiety about truth-telling and the gulf that exists between this country's technocratic elite and much of its population.

"I don't think there is anything more important that I can do in my time as editor-in-chief of this organisation."