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There has been much Twitter sharing of Reuter’s social media guidelines today. To add some new analysis to the discussion, I uploaded the entire text to IBM’s Many Eyes data visualization tool.

Check out the “word tree” below: It shows the overall tone of the guidelines is cautious and wary. It pays lip service to encouraging social media use, but the most frequent instruction is “You should do nothing that…”

Reading through the policy, it is filled with these phrases: “take care not to undermine the commercial basis of our company,” “play into the hands of our critics,” “you risk undermining your own credibility,” “take care what you reveal,” “does not conflict with our commercial objectives,” “you may reveal your sources…by using ‘following’ or ‘friending’ functionality” and “don’t scoop the wire.”

In isolation, most of the points are fine advice. But the overall tone is bordering on paranoia and panic.