Former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie insisted that Rupert Murdoch never put him under commercial pressure - and in fact often felt he went too far.
Mr MacKenzie told the Leveson Inquiry that the newspaper had become "more cautious" since his time in charge between 1981 and 1994.
He defended his regime at The Sun, saying he did not worry about which stories would sell more copies and claiming there was "no absolute truth" in any paper.
The ex-editor said he left it to his readers to decide whether his decisions were right, acknowledging The Sun's sharp circulation decline on Merseyside over its controversial coverage of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, in which 96 Liverpool football fans died.
"I didn't spend too much time pondering the ethics of how a story was gained nor over-worry about whether to publish or not," he said in a witness statement.
"If we believed the story to be true and we felt Sun readers should know the facts, we published it and we left it to them to decide if we had done the right thing.
Mr MacKenzie also told the press standards inquiry of his close working relationship with Mr Murdoch, the owner of The Sun.
He said in his statement: "I was never put under any commercial pressure by my management or owner when running The Sun. In fact the reverse. Rupert Murdoch often felt the paper had gone too far under my editorship."
Mr Murdoch was furious when he found out The Sun was to pay £1 million in damages to Elton John after a story falsely claimed the singer had hired rent boys, the inquiry heard. Mr MacKenzie recalled sending the media mogul a fax then receiving a 40-minute phone call of "non-stop abuse". He told the hearing: "Let's put it this way, he wasn't pleased."
He stood by comments he made in a Leveson Inquiry seminar in October, when he said: "My view was that if it sounded right it was probably right and therefore we should lob it in."
