|
Ethics in Journalism:
Finding Web Sites
By far, the best search engine on the World Wide Web is Google, which is located and maintained at Stanford University. Google allows for phrase searches, for combination (boolean) searches, and for domain limitations. For example, if you wanted to find sites that dealt with ethics in journalism and were hosted by educational institutions, namely universities, you would type in one of the following (including spaces and punctuation):
"journalistic ethics" site:.edu
"ethics in journalism" site:.edu
Likewise, you could find the same information, but at sites hosted by not-for-profit organizations or government agencies by typing in any of the following:
"journalistic ethics" site:.org
"ethics in journalism" site:.org
"journalistic ethics" site:.gov
"ethics in journalism" site:.gov
The Google command for domain limitation is site:, followed by the domain you wish to limit results to, such as government agencies (.gov), universities (.edu), not-for-profit organizations (.org), and military sites (.mil). By typing site:.edu in the above search, you are telling the search engine to return only those sites that come from educational institutions, not-for-profit organizations, and government agencies. The Google command for a phrase search is enclosing the phrase within quotes. So when you typed "journalistic ethics" or "ethics in journalism" (in quotes), you tell the search engine not to return sites with the words ethics in them, unless that word is immediately preceded by the word journalistic or followed by the phrase in journalism. The space between the two commands takes the place of the boolean operator and, thus allowing you to combine terms.
Of course, you can also click on Google's Advanced Search options, which would allow you to more graphically envision your search strategy. And as always with the web, keep in mind that site evaluation is important, as this web tutorial instructs.
Now try typing the following into Google:
"journalistic ethics" site:.edu
This search will return 2000 hits, and one of the first is an excellent site, Yale University Library's Mass Media and Popular Culture Page, which includes hyperlinks to EthicNet, to The Independent Media Institute, and The Institute for Public Accuracy, among other websites.
The other excellent search engine on the web is called All The Web. However, it is not as intuitive as Google. You have to click on Advanced Search in order to get it to handle phrases correctly, or in order to limit your results by domain extension. Still, alltheweb.com allows some commands that Google does not, so if you need to do an expert search, give it a try. Where both Google and All The Web allow you to search for images, only All the Web will allow you to find video and audio files.
Tony Fonseca
Electronic Resources / Reference Librarian
230 Ellender Memorial Library
Phone: 985-448-4675
|
