KBS' new President and CEO Park Min, third from left, alongside the news outlet's executives, apologizes to the public for alleged biased reporting under the former CEO that undermined fairness and led to loss of trust, during a press conference at the company's headquarters in Seoul, Nov. 14. Yonhap

The new chief of the country's largest public broadcaster KBS on Tuesday apologized for the company's loss of public trust due to its "unfair and biased reporting" during the tenure of his predecessor, and vowed reform measures to regain the trust and solve financial problems.

"We deeply regret the loss of trust by undermining fairness, which is a core value as a public broadcast, and respectfully apologize," Park Min, president and CEO of the broadcaster, said in a press conference held a day after his inauguration.

After acknowledging past instances of false, unfair or biased reporting, he pledged to implement a series of measures to prevent any recurrence, including activating a fact-checking system to prevent false reports and reporting corrective news at the beginning of news programs.

The company will also conduct thorough investigations into major cases of unfair reporting and publish white papers on them as part of recurrence prevention measures while holding those responsible accountable, he added.

"We will make securing fairness and reliability the top priority of management," Park stressed.

Outlining plans to improve the company's financial situation, Park said he and other executives will take a 30 percent pay cut and that the company will expand its honorary retirement program to improve "the inefficient manpower structure."

Park's comments come as KBS is facing a number of challenges in the rapidly changing media industry, including declining viewership and competition from private broadcasters.

Further exacerbating the broadcaster's financial problems is the recent introduction of a system to collect license fees for the company separately from electricity bills, a measure that will have negative impacts on the broadcaster's revenue stream.

KBS has charged a monthly fee of 2,500 won ($1.88) to every household with a television receiver since 1994, and the fee had been embedded in the monthly electricity invoice. (Yonhap)