Rupert Murdoch's British tabloid The Sun on Monday said police raids against its journalists were part of a "witchhunt" that had weakened press freedom in Britain.
Days before Murdoch was due to fly in to reassure staff that he would not close the paper, Associate Editor Trevor Kavanagh said in an editorial that police were treating staff "like members of an organized crime gang".
"The Sun is not a 'swamp' that needs draining," wrote Kavanagh, who was political editor at The Sun from 1984 to 2005, a time when Britain's biggest-selling paper boasted that it could swing election results.
"Nor are those other great News International titles, The Times and The Sunday Times," he added.
"Yet in what would at any other time cause uproar in parliament and among civil liberty and human rights campaigners, its journalists are being treated like members of an organized crime gang."
Police arrested five senior Sun journalists on Saturday on suspicion of bribing police and public officials for information, in a new blow for Murdoch's US-based News Corporation.
Twenty-one people have now been arrested in the inquiry, plus 17 in a separate inquiry into the hacking of mobile phone voice mails.
The hacking scandal prompted Murdoch to shut The Sun's weekly sister title the News of the World in July, with the loss of hundreds of jobs.
Kavanagh said the investigation into corruption and phone hacking was "the biggest police operation in British criminal history - bigger even than the Pan Am Lockerbie murder probe".
The bombing of a Pan Am flight over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988 was the worst terrorist attack on British soil, killing 270 people.
Kavanagh also accused police of carrying out pointless raids on journalists' homes, instead of calling them in for appointments.
"Wives and children have been humiliated as up to 20 officers at a time rip up floorboards and sift through intimate possessions, love letters and entirely private documents," Kavanagh wrote.
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时作业11:Unit 1《Festivals around the world》(新人教版必修3浙江专用)
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时作业10:Unit 5《Music》(新人教版必修2浙江专用)
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时作业17:Unit 2《Working the land》(新人教版必修4福建专用)
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时作业9:Unit 4《Wildlife protection》(新人教版必修2浙江专用)
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时作业19:Unit 4《Body language》(新人教版必修4浙江专用)
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时作业27:Unit 2《Poems》(新人教版选修6福建专用)
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时作业18:Unit 3《A taste of English humour》(新人教版必修4浙江专用)
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时作业7:Unit 2《The Olympic Games》(新人教版必修2浙江专用)
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时作业1:Unit 1《Friendship》(新人教版必修1浙江专用)
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时作业26:Unit 1《Art》(新人教版选修6福建专用)
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时作业22:Unit 2《The United Kingdom》(新人教版必修5福建专用)
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时作业13:Unit 3《The Million Pound Bank Note》(新人教版必修3浙江专用)
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时作业18:Unit 3《A taste of English humour》(新人教版必修4福建专用)
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时作业8:Unit 3《Computers]》(新人教版必修2浙江专用)
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时作业4:Unit 4《Earthquakes》(新人教版必修1浙江专用)
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时作业37:Unit 2《Cloning》(新人教版选修8福建专用)
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时作业38:Unit 3《Inventors and inventions》(新人教版选修8福建专用)
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时作业16:Unit 1《Women of achievement》(新人教版必修4浙江专用)
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时作业17:Unit 2《Working the land》(新人教版必修4浙江专用)
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时作业30:Unit 5《The power of nature》(新人教版选修6福建专用)
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时作业19:Unit 4《Body language》(新人教版必修4福建专用)
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时作业14:Unit 4《Astronomy the science of the stars》(新人教版必修3浙江专用)
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时作业29:Unit 4《Global warming》(新人教版选修6福建专用)
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时作业8:Unit 3《Computers]》(新人教版必修2福建专用)
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时作业21:Unit 1《Great scientists》(新人教版必修5福建专用)
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时作业12:Unit 2《Healthy eating》(新人教版必修3浙江专用)
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时作业2:Unit 2《English around the world》(新人教版必修1浙江专用)
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时作业14:Unit 4《Astronomy the science of the stars》(新人教版必修3福建专用)
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时作业34:Unit 4《Sharing》(新人教版选修7福建专用)
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时作业20:Unit 5《Theme parks》(新人教版必修4福建专用)