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It is often said that the only sure winner in American politics is the media .. Maybe not this time. Big Media lost big. But it was more than a loss. It was an abdication of authority. Large media institutions, such as CBS or the New York Times, have been regarded as nothing if not authoritative .. But it is this franchise that Big Media, incredibly, has just thrown away ..

Two months ago, Gallup reported that public belief in the media's ability to report news accurately and fairly had fallen to 44% -- what Gallup called a significant drop from 54% just a year ago ..

Big Media chose precisely the wrong moment to give itself over to an apparent compulsion to overthrow the Bush presidency. This was the election that brought the reality of the Information Age to politics .. A survey by the Pew Research Center reports that over three years from January 2000, the percentage of people getting candidate and campaign news fell 9% for daily newspapers, 10% for network news and 5% for news magazines. The numbers rose, up to 4%, for cable news, the Internet and comedy TV shows ..

In a post-2004 election report, Pew and the University of Michigan jointly note that this past summer, 40% of Internet users pulled down political information, a significant increase over the 2000 election. And not merely, as is often assumed, to ride with their own political posses. "Wired Americans are more aware than non-Internet users of all kinds of arguments," Pew concluded, "even those that challenge their preferred candidates and issue positions." Maybe the networks and big dailies should try spinning in both directions, which is what the most sophisticated political consumers seem to want. But it's probably too late for that. Rather than be spun by large, faceless networks and newspapers, people now seem to want something more akin to a political conversation with the spinners operating Web sites.