Gordon Brown today revealed that he had had a "very friendly" conversation with the Sun's owner, Rupert Murdoch, after the paper criticised the way he wrote to a mother whose son was killed in Afghanistan.

The prime minister insisted his personal relations with the media tycoon were good, although he appeared to accept this would not stop the paper campaigning against Labour.

Brown made his disclosure in an interview after a senior Tory last night suggested that David Cameron did not approve of the way in which the Sun had covered the complaint from Jacqui Janes, who was unhappy with the handwritten letter she had received from Brown.

Earlier this week, the Sun reported Janes's comments about the letter very prominently. It also claimed, in an editorial, that the prime minister's untidy and badly spelt letter illustrated his disregard for the armed forces.

Brown's allies thought the attack unreasonable because the prime minister's handwriting is affected by his poor eyesight. Many commentators and members of the public also complained that the coverage was unfair.

This morning, when asked about the affair during an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Brown said he had spoken to Murdoch since the Sun ran its original story on Monday.

"I talk to Rupert Murdoch on a number of occasions and I talked to him this week. It was a very friendly conversation," he said.

"I have got a great deal of respect for what he has done, and I hope that he has some respect for me."

Asked whether the pair had discussed the Janes story, Brown said: "What decisions the Sun makes through its editor, and then through its British operations, is a matter for them, and I am really not going to get involved in that.

"I want to be able to show that what we are doing and the decisions we make are thought out, they are carefully examined before we announce them, we know what we are doing and we share the sense of pain that all members of the public have when you see loved ones lost and you see casualties."

Questioned about whether he had been hurt by the coverage, the prime minister said: "The criticism of me and the questioning of me is nothing to what I know parents – and I count Jacqui Janes in that – [are] going through."

He said Janes had "legitimate questions about what happened to her son" and that the government had to answer them.

On the BBC's Question Time last night, the Tory security spokeswoman, Pauline Neville-Jones, praised Brown for taking the trouble to write to the relatives of servicemen killed in Afghanistan and criticised the Sun's coverage.

"I don't particularly like what they did with it and I think, actually, their readers clearly didn't – and they are right," she said. "Their readers are right. They made a mistake."

She said she thought Cameron would agree with her comments "because I think the decent reaction of people is that you don't go on and on like that".

"The Sun has its own editorial line," she added. "I am quite certain that nobody in the Tory party is actually going to foster this kind of personal attack – because it did become very personal, and I don't like that. I think we should fight our politics clean."