Editors have an occupational weakness for striking holier-than-thou attitudes, especially on the subject of newspaper ethics. Last week the subject got a refreshingly candid airing from Jenkin Lloyd Jones, 46, editor of the Jones family's Tulsa Tribune and recently president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. In a lecture at the University of Kansas, where he won the first certificate of editorial leadership awarded by the William Allen White Foundation, Jones said: "We often tell our readers only half-truths. We are constantly sweeping facts under the rugs."
Getting right down to cases, Jones admitted that his Tribune sometimes ignores long-ago criminal...