Matt Welch nails the New York Times story:

Readers -- not to mention the legions of quality reporters at the nation's other 1,500 dailies -- can be forgiven for finding this notion laughable and borderline offensive. Since when does a meritocratic country of 276 million weirdos need a single council of wise men to decide what stories are important?

Yet some people act as if our very democracy depends on this essentially undemocratic notion.

This is exactly the reaction I had when I subscribed to the Wall Street Journal for about 6 months about 30 years ago and realized that nearly all the stories I heard on NPR had started life in one of the large eastern daily papers. It was the beginning of my contempt for the liberal media. The current passion play is just another example of the amazing arrogance and ego of these people.

"America's readers need The New York Times to re-establish its credibility," warned Mike Clark, the "reader advocate" for The Florida Times-Union. "America's journalists need the Times to regain its status as a journalistic role model."

These are the people who keep insisting that the media don't have even the slightest hint of a breath of bias.