Prosecutors asked to justify Operation Elveden following spate of acquittals

Chris Pharo, 46, news editor at The Sun as well as Jamie Pyatt, 52, a reporter, were acquitted at the Old Bailey of paying a police officer for information and helping him commit misconduct in public office.

Juries in the Operation Eleven trials have consistently cleared journalists of wrongdoing in their dealings with the police and other officials.

The operation led to 27 journalists being charged but only two were convicted.

In April, nine outstanding prosecutions were abandoned after the Court of Appeal overturned two convictions as juries had not been told to consider the question whether journalists had acted in the public interest.

The vindicated pair asked why taxpayers’ money had been used on prosecuting journalists for “doing their job”.

Mr Pharo said: “How could anyone imagine spending more than £30 million over four years prosecuting journalists for doing their job was remotely in the public interest?”

Mr Pyatt added: “The head has finally been chopped off the Elveden dragon. It’s gone. It should never have been there in the first place. It’s disgraceful.”

In particular he criticised the fact 80 Metropolitan police officers were involved who should have been on the streets.

The court heard that Simon Quinn, a police officer in Surrey, was paid £10,000 by The Sun for tips on police investigations – among them the murder of schoolgirl Milly Dowler, murderer Daniel Gonzalez and rapist Antoni Imiela.

Mr Quinn was jailed for 18 months earlier this year.

But The Sun journalists denied they encouraged him, with Mr Pyatt insisting the information he received was in the “public interest” and that there was “nothing in there so confidential and secret the public don’t have a right to read it”.

Nigel Rumfitt QC, for Mr Pharo, said there was a “monumental error of judgment” in seeking a retrial after another jury was unable to reach a verdict this year.

The Crown Prosecution Service, defending its decision to pursue a retrial, said in a statement: ‘It is right that a jury, rather than the CPS, decides whether a defendant is guilty or not.

“The CPS is duty-bound to prosecute cases which provide a realistic prospect of conviction and are in the public interest.

“This case in particular involved allegations of multiple payments to a corrupt public official in areas where the public should generally expect confidentiality.”

The CPS and Scotland Yard’s pursuit of the journalists have cost the public over £20 million in court fees, legal aid payments and their own budgets.

John Butterfield QC, for Lucy Panton, a former crime editor at the now-defunct News of the World whose conviction for paying public officials was quashed, said: “It is extraordinary and troubling in a supposedly free society to have journalists on trial for articles written in good faith during the course of their job.

“We need journalists to be brave, we need them to be pushing at the edges.”