CKEditor, Media, & Files — oh my We're relying on the Media module heavily for embedded video throughout our site.  When Media is used for a field, it is working beautifully for us. 

We ran into problems, however, embedding Media rich text fields. We're using CKEditor, which strips Media tags when using filtered HTML. For security purposes, we want all non-admin users to continue using filtered HTML.  There were other complications, too: The UI was a little strange since you had to add the (non Media) image button to allow users to align images.  So they'd have two image-y buttons, one to upload and one to style. Finally we decided we could keep rich text pared down to text without images.

However we've also been using Media to upload files (documents/docx/pdf).  And we definitely want users to be able to link to files in the editor.  Should we use CK Finder?  Or is there a way we can expose the view at admin/content/file to non admin users so they could have an inventory of files and copy urls? Or rebuild a similar view, as described here?

I feel like I must be overlooking something obvious, as this seems like a very basic CMS feature... Have I managed to obscure functionality with my permissions and plugins?
Thanks!
You should try using the node reference (References) module and create a field on your content type. The node reference will ask you to specify a content type that allows users to select from a list of previously created content. You can also create a view which you can select as the source for the select list.

https://drupal.org/project/references