Perception and reality in press and politics

There is an interesting comparator from Buzzfeed which is currently circulating on social media. In a survey carried out by Ipsos MORI last year, 1,015 British adults aged 16-75 were asked questions about population and social issues in Britain. These perceptions are then compared with national statistics and the results show that everything we think we know is wrong.

Why might that be? Some will argue that national statistics don't reflect reality. There may be an element of this, for example, unreported crime is (understandably) not included in national crime statistics but is nevertheless real for all those affected by it. However, the inadequacies of statistical measurement (of which there are many) are unlikely to explain the fundamental mismatch in perception that a comparator like this indicates.

For me, media and political debate in the UK plays to our perceptions (and, therefore, prejudices) far more than it does to the reality revealed through the statistics we collect locally and nationally. We need to remember that our press is not balanced or neutral but, taken as a whole, predominantly right-wing. All opinion mediated to us by press and politicians is edited opinion reflecting (consciously or not) the editor's perceptions and stances. Where our press is predominantly right-wing, that also means that the majority of mediated news is presented from a right-wing perspective. This is in addition, to the more evident manipulation of statistics for which a politician like Iain Duncan Smith has rightly been criticised.

The result is that political policies are formed, not by the closest thing we have to reality on the ground (which is, for all its inadequacies, the statistical information we possess), but the discussion of this by press and politicians who are coming at this not from a neutral perspective but from a specific party political perspective. This means, ultimately, that many political policies are not evidence-based and address perception rather than reality; this being a primary reason why they don't deliver what the politicians introducing them say they will deliver.

The gap between perception and reality forms a significant part of Owen Jones' Guardian piece at the weekend entitled It's socialism for the rich and capitalism for the rest of us in Britain. This, before you point it out to me, comes from a left-wing perspective - it is, therefore, an important counter-balance to the overall right-wing bias of the press.

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The Jam - News of the World.       

Christendom is on the way out

Responding to the Ipsos-Mori survey of 'census Christians' commissioned by the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science UK, Simon Barrow, co-director of the Christian think-tank Ekklesia, has made what is in my view a very accurate and sensible response:

"This opinion survey makes interesting reading as part of a whole web of research on the changing shape and location of Christianity in Britain over the past thirty or more years.

"It shows that 'civic' and 'cultural' Christian self-identification is a very different thing to the deeply-rooted faith held by a much smaller number of people whose believing, belonging and behaving is strongly shaped by regular participation in active Christian communities.

"While we can argue over details, the broad outline of what this survey reveals should not come as any shock or threat to church leaders who have been paying attention to what has been happening in recent decades.

"Top-down and institutional religion is in decline. Trying to restore or maintain the cultural and political dominance of Established religious institutions in what is now a mixed-belief 'spiritual and secular' society is a backward-looking approach.

"Churches have a creative opportunity here. It is to rediscover a different, ground-up vision of Christianity based on practices like economic sharing, peacemaking, hospitality and restorative justice. These were among the distinguishing marks of the earliest followers of Jesus. They have always been part of the 'nonconformist' tradition shared in different ways by Anabaptists, Quakers, radical Catholics, Free Churches and faithful dissenters in all streams of Christian life.

"The mutually reinforcing pact between big religion and top-down authority that we call 'Christendom' is on the way out.

"The kind of conservative religious aggression that claims 'anti-Christian discrimination' every time Christians are asked to treat others fairly and equally in the public square is a threatened response to the loss of top-down religion's social power. So is overbearing 'Christian nation' rhetoric, and the 'culture wars' that some hardline believers and non-believers sometimes seek to launch and win against each other.

"A positive, post-Christendom perspective suggests that Christianity can and should flourish beyond the demise of 'big religion', and that a level-playing field in public life can and should involve both religious and non-religious participants.
"Likewise, while Richard Dawkins may not be a subtle, unbiased or persuasive analyst of religion overall, it would be entirely unhelpful for believers to dismiss this survey because they disagree with its commissioner in other respects. Its content evidently needs further and deeper analysis, alongside other data, than the initial response to it has allowed."
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Al Green - Belle.