These days "IRS Targets Conservative Group" is a dog-bites-man story. But this one was man-bites-dog by virtue of its placement: on the front page of the New York Times, a newspaper that is usually supportive of this administration's efforts to suppress domestic dissent. Put it down to a sudden outbreak of news judgment.

The news value to the Times may lie more in the nature of the organization than its trouble with the IRS. "In a famously left-leaning Hollywood, where Democratic fund-raisers fill the social...