A TV journalist films outside Scotland Yard - police relations with the press could change dramatically. Photograph: Felix Clay for the Guardian

Police officers could be prevented from talking freely to the media under tough new proposals being considered in two major inquiries.

An inquiry ordered by the home secretary began this week to address "alleged corruption and abuse of power" in police relationships with the media. A second, led by Elizabeth Filkin, the former parliamentary commissioner for standards, began at Scotland Yard and aims to draw up a framework for how officers operate in their contact with journalists.

Both inquiries are considering proposals that all contact between police – of all ranks – should be regulated and officially recorded by a press officer.

The investigations begin as Lord Justice Leveson prepares to take evidence in the first part of his inquiry into press ethics and practices in relation to the public, politicians and police.

The proposals represent the toughest clampdown on media relations since Sir Paul Condon launched his anti-corruption drive in Scotland Yard in the mid 1990s.

This month a 51-year-old officer will answer police bail after being arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office over alleged unauthorised leaks from the Operation Weeting phone-hacking inquiry.

Some commentators question whether the drive to close down communication between police officers and journalists is workable or sensible. Gavin Millar QC, who represented local newspaper journalist Sally Murrer when she was prosecuted with her police source over leaks, said draconian measures could put legitimate whistleblowers off coming forward.

"If the effect of all these new rules and injunctions is to curb their willingness to talk to journalists, then it may prevent them revealing malpractice and corruption within the force. It is a very important route out for this kind of information," said Millar.

"Whistleblowers have to make a self assessment of how justifiable it is to speak to a journalist and it is terribly difficult for police officers to make that self assessment about the propriety of what they are considering if they are frightened." He added: "What has happened over the years is it just goes on on an unattributable source basis, the journalist is bound by obligations not to reveal their source and no one finds out. That has been the way of the world."

The inquiry ordered by Theresa May is being carried out by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and is led by a former chief constable of Essex, Roger Baker. His remit will range from payments made to custody sergeants for tipoffs about arrests, to buying drinks and providing lavish hospitality for officers.

Filkin was called in by the former commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson to examine the ethical considerations that should underpin relations between the Metropolitan police and the media.

Stephenson resigned in July after it emerged that the Met had given a contract to Neil Wallis, the former deputy editor of the News of the World, who was later arrested on suspicion of phone hacking.

Dick Fedorcio, Scotland Yard's director of communications, has been put on extended leave as the Independent Police Complaints Commission examines an allegation of gross misconduct over the hiring of Wallis.

The attempt to impose tough rules on contacts between journalists and the media is being seen by some senior sources as a "spasm" in response to the phone hacking revelations. In the recent history of Scotland Yard, the approach to the media has seesawed between full, transparent openness and draconian clampdowns.

Sir Robert Mark enlisted the help of the media in the 1970s when tackling corrupt officers in his ranks, but in the 1990s Condon closed down contact as he launched a new anti-corruption drive.

At the height of the controls pagers and mobile telephones were bugged to identify which officers were speaking without authorisation to journalists. Following Condon, Sir John Stevens opened up the flow of information once more, believing that Scotland Yard had to trust its senior officers to talk to the media, or risk reporters relying on second- or third-hand information.

The most extreme attempt to silence a police source and a journalist failed in 2008 when the case against Murrer, a reporter on the Milton Keynes Citizen, and her police source collapsed.

Murrer was arrested three times as part of an investigation into leaks by Thames Valley police. But the judge ruled that a surveillance operation to identify the police source, involving the bugging of Murrer's car, was a breach of her human rights under Article 10 of the European convention on human rights, which protects journalistic sources as one of the basic conditions for press freedom.

Padraig Reidy, from Index on Censorship said: "Journalists have always talked to the police in order to find out information or to get stories and the idea that the relationship should be shut down is dangerous both for journalists and for the police. It would limit any officer's ability to raise legitimate concerns and it is only going to raise suspicions of the police if the message is that they will not talk to anyone."