The Sun has withdrawn a Supreme Court appeal over their contemptuous coverage of the arrest of Joanna Yeates' landlord during her murder investigation.

Lord Justice Leveson was told of the decision as tabloid reporters were questioned over articles on Jo Yeates' landlord Christopher Jefferies.

A spokesperson for News International told Hacked Off: "I can confirm the appeal has been withdrawn but we are not making any comment."

The Daily Mirror, also found guilt of contempt by the Attorney General last year, are continuing to appeal.

Ryan Parry, a reporter for the Mirror, told the Inquiry he was happy with the way he conducted himself when reporting on Jefferies.

He added: “The decisions that are made at an editorial level are out of my hands. All we can do is learn from this and hopefully improve for the future."

Parry said the Mirror had received several phone calls and emails from people claiming to be former pupils and colleagues of Jefferies, and the words “odd” and “eccentric” had cropped up several times.

He added: “We went to a number of different sources on Mr Jefferies and everything we heard seemed to gel [with our coverage]."

His written witness statement to the inquiry said there was a public interest in reading about the story, including about Jefferies.

Gary O’Shea, a news reporter at the Sun, accepted his paper’s coverage of Jefferies should been “more neutral and dispassionate”.

He said an ex-pupil of Jefferies had been quoted fairly and accurately in articles he wrote for the paper but that he should not have been quoted at the length he was.

He told the inquiry: “What I’m happy to concede is that there should have been filters applied to that information from that gentleman”.

He added: “We don't often go wrong. When it looks like we're about to go wrong, we usually put it right."

Stephen Waring, publishing director at the Sun, said he was duty editor when O’Shea’s coverage of the Jefferies stories was published.

He told the inquiry he was responsible for the Sun’s “Obsessed by Death” headline and apologised to Jefferies personally and on behalf of the paper.

He said the material published was too strong and the Sun had subjected Jefferies to “considerable scrutiny”.

He added: “We made the wrong decision. We committed contempt of court and we committed a libel… there was a distinct lack of balance [in the coverage].

“I attempted with the lawyer to try to strike a balance between what we could say and what would keep us on the right side of the law.”

He added: “Please don’t judge my colleagues by the errors I made in this edition, because they're a bunch of very committed, hard-working individuals."