Murdoch UK journalists cleared of illegal payments to officials

LONDON, March 20 (Reuters) - Four senior journalists at Rupert Murdoch's British tabloid The Sun were cleared on Friday of making illegal payments to public officials, the latest reporters to be exonerated after a massive police investigation.

The journalists - the paper's executive editor, deputy editor, chief reporter and royal editor - were found not guilty of paying military figures for information, including details about Queen Elizabeth's grandsons, Princes William and Harry.

However, one former Ministry of Defence employee who was paid 100,000 pounds ($149,000) by the paper for passing on stories was jailed for one year.

The issue of whether journalists should face criminal action for paying for stories they deem to be in the public interest has been controversial. Critics argue that such cases should never be brought to court.

"There is no celebration whilst this witch hunt continues against my colleagues who are still facing the nightmare that I hopefully one day will wake up from," Duncan Larcombe, the paper's royal editor, told reporters after the verdict.

The multi-million pound police investigation into illegal payments arose out of an inquiry into phone hacking by journalists on The Sun's sister paper, the News of the World, which led to the jailing of ex-editor Andy Coulson and a number of other senior staff last June.

News UK, the British newspaper arm of Murdoch's News Corp. , handed over a huge trove of emails to detectives investigating the hacking offences, resulting in the arrest of dozens of Sun journalists for payments to officials.

So far only two former News of the World reporters have been found guilty for such payments. Former police officers and prison officers have also been convicted and are serving jail terms.

The Sun's Larcombe, chief reporter John Kay, executive editor Fergus Shanahan and deputy editor Geoff Webster had argued that payments made to soldiers and Ministry of Defence officials had been for stories which were in the public interest.

The four men were found not guilty by a jury at London's Old Bailey criminal court after 10 days of deliberations

After the verdict, reporting restrictions were lifted on the jailing of MoD official Bettina Jordan-Barber, who was sentenced to a year in prison in January. She had admitted passing information to Kay, who called her his "number one military source", between 2004 and 2012. (Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Gareth Jones)