And of course, that's the point of these articles: they're reality distortion devices to make the unpopular minority opinions of one bit of rural Britain stand in for 'what rural people think'.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

More on that in this powerful @georgemonbiot.bsky.social piece.

In reality, time and again, when you look at polling on rural vs urban opinion it's often identical. With strong majorities opposing the attitudes and habits of the very people the Telegraph is headlining.

As I've written before, the rural culture war is a myth: national.thelead.uk/p/the-rural-...

The polling asked multiple questions. But none of them mention 'Metropolitan bias' and perceptions of inaccuracy vary widely depending on how the question is framed.

For instance, one asks whether BBC Reports about rural issues are biased: 28% of rural respondents say yes, 27% say no.

Now, it's telling that the actual poll is never linked and the questions it actually asked aren't mentioned: not in the Telegraph, nor Farmers' Weekly, nor the Regional Moorland Group's own article about their poll.

But dig around on YouGov and you'll find the original here:

tinyurl.com/3mvy2phm

From the tenor of the piece, it really isn't clear whether they consider that a bad thing or a badge of honour.