Truth About Half-Truth

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 records in obituaries, drops stories that might needlessly embarrass the subject, and uses a double standard in reporting some news, e.g., carrying squibs on the doings of the town drunk, but killing the drunken-driving episode of a prominent citizen. When an editor tries to decide what to print and what to kill, he said, he "must understand that uncompromising honesty carries cruelty in its saddlebags, and that too much gentleness will help evil thrive."

Jones is even willing to compromise on the issue that many editors consider the most uncompromising of all: news coverage of the government. "Many of my colleagues in the newspaper business have leaped to the conclusion that all public affairs not directly connected with national defense must be conducted in the open," he said. "I disagree. For it is only behind closed doors that most politicians --yea, even statesmen--honestly express their views and try to get at the meat of the question ... No sound policy is decided upon without frank exchange of views. And a frank exchange of views is rarely reached with the press looking over the shoulders of the policymakers."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.