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Do social media policies really work? That’s the question many have asked since Reuters released their new social media guidelines earlier this month.

Reuters’ guidelines appear to be fairly strict, telling journalists to avoid exposing bias online and not to “scoop the wire” by breaking stories on Twitter.

And Reuters’ isn’t the only organization struggling to incorporate social media into their business model. The New York Times and the Washington Post also received a fair amount of negative attention when they released their guidelines last year.

And according to GigaOm’s Mathew Ingram, these policies just don’t work.

For whatever reason, the wire service recently issued new guidelines for its staff, and they suffer from many of the same problems that both the NYT and WaPo policies did. All of these flaws boil down to one thing: A desire to control something that fundamentally can’t be controlled, and a fear of what happens when that control is lost. Without even bothering to enumerate the positive aspects of social media use, the policy starts in with the warnings right away:

We want to encourage you to use social media approaches in your journalism but we also need to make sure that you are fully aware of the risks — especially those that threaten our hard-earned reputation for independence and freedom from bias or our brand.

The risks, of course, are everywhere — someone might say something embarrassing, or post a tweet that others could twist to disparage Reuters:

The advent of social media does not change your relationship with the company that employs you — do not use social media to embarrass or disparage Thomson Reuters. Our company’s brands are important; so, too, is your personal brand. Think carefully about how what you do reflects upon you as a professional and upon us as an employer of professionals.

The overwhelming message is that, while social media is great and useful for many things (although none of those things are ever mentioned), it is a minefield of potential dangers and even a potential threat to the company’s traditional media business:

We’re in a competitive business and while the spirit of social media is collaborative we need to take care not to undermine the commercial basis of our company.

The policy says that “where practical, you should ask someone to check content of Twitter posts,” even as it admits that this is frequently impossible, and warns that supervisors will be monitoring those tweets to see if they cross any lines. It even says that “when using Twitter or social media in a professional capacity, you should aim to be personable but not to include irrelevant material about your personal life.” Why not? No reason is given, but the obvious implication is that it’s “unprofessional” or might “damage the brand.”

Reuters, like many news organizations, is struggling to find the middle ground — both encouraging journalists to use social media while still keeping a firm grasp on their reputation and brand. So what do you think? Do these social media policies make sense? Share your thoughts.