Tip for London Police Officers: Booze and Secrets Don’t Mix

Do not indulge in “late-night carousing” with journalists. Do not flirt with them, either. And above all, advised a report, if you are a police officer, do not let a member of the news media ply you with alcohol in an effort to get you to “drop your defenses” and start saying things you should keep to yourself.

“These are all longstanding media tactics to get you to spill the beans,” warned the report, an investigation into the relationship between the news media and the Metropolitan Police Service. “Avoid.” The report was commissioned by the police last summer in response to the phone hacking scandal that led Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation to close the disgraced tabloid The News of the World. Under pressure from Parliament, the police admitted that senior officers had enjoyed frequent lunches and dinners with editors and reporters from The News of the World, had hired an editor just after he had resigned from the paper and had continued to socialize with News of the World journalists who were suspected of hacking.