We're in a curious period when it comes to the treatment of cycling in the national media. Few things bring popular approval so fast as sporting glory, of course, hence Bradley Wiggins' pretty much ubiquitous national hero status in the press.

And there's more to it now than Olympic golds. Everyday cycling, for several decades viewed by most papers as a fringe and slightly crank-ish pursuit is now sufficiently mainstream to merit some nuanced and sophisticated coverage.

The most obvious example is the Times's long-running and exemplary Cities Fit for Cycling campaign, but the message has spread. The Telegraph titles, for instance, long seen as a preserve of the suburban car-is-king mentality, has run recent articles on, for instance, the rise of the @CycleHatred Twitter feed and arguing that cyclists running red lights doesn't necessarily imply recklessness.

All the more reason to bemoan, then, the Telegraph's return to old ways on Saturday with a large story in the features pages on the "war" declared by terrified Surrey locals against the supposedly lawless and uncouth cyclists who infest their cosy villages at weekends.

Harry Wallop's story is by no means the worst I've ever seen, but it's an interesting case study of the clichés, generalisations, misapprehensions and curiosities which charactertise the genre. So with all due apologies to Wallop for picking on him, stick with me as I take this in three steps: why the article is silly journalism; what it tells us about the status of cycling; and why, ultimately, I worry about articles like this.

The first task is pretty straightforward. The clichés used alone – "Lycra louts", "Mamils", "Wiggo-wannabes clad in skintight clothing" – indicate this is a piece which begins from a conclusion and works backwards from there.

The oddity is that there is the outline of an interesting article. Cycling around some bits of Surrey, notably Box Hill, has got ever more popular since the Olympics, and some locals are unimpressed, notably by road closures for events like the recent Surrey-London 100.

Sadly, Wallop makes no real attempt at balance. It begins with a second-hand account of a cyclist spitting at the window of a car which had overtaken some riders:

She had just run into some cyclists — three abreast — and had tried to overtake, but they wouldn't move at all.

Maybe the cyclists were spittle-happy road hogs. But maybe they were, deliberately, taking the lane to avoid an unsafe overtake on a blind corner, and reacted angrily (if still wrongly, in my view) to being put in peril. Wallop doesn't appear curious on this point.

Separately, a local café owner says:

If Wiggins came in here, I'd give him a piece of my mind.

This is a fantastic example of what is sometimes called the 'cyclists should get their house in order' argument – that people who have nothing in common except choosing cycling as one of their several regular forms of transport are nonetheless necessarily defined by it, and are somehow responsible for the worst actions by others on bikes.

It's surprisingly common. When I tweeted an objection to the Wallop piece a Guardian colleague commented along the lines of, 'Ah yes, but lots of cyclists jump red lights, don't they?'

It's an odd sentiment, and one people too often don't examine properly. It's roughly comparable to saying: 'If I see that Paul McCartney I'd give him a piece of my mind about the Animal Liberation Front. Yes, most vegetarians are fine, but they need to do something about the ones who go too far. They give all of them a bad name."

Now every journalist will admit to being more proud of some articles than others, and of sometimes having to take on an unwelcome task suggested by a news editor. The real curiouity here is that Wallop, quite genuinely, seems unaware of the problems with his piece. During a Twitter exchange in which, to his credit, Wallop was arguably more polite than me, he said he "merely report[ed] what I discovered in my 48 hours in Surrey".

Two things occur. Firstly, the article doesn't quote any of the supposed Lycra-clad hordes, indicating they're either somewhat less endemic than suggested or that Wallop opted to not seek their views. Additionally, to just faithfully report the views and prejudices of one group of people is not necessarily fair journalism. You could, I am sure, find a village where the predominant view is that crime is primarily an issue for the black community. But would you report it thus, with no attempt at analysis or context?

This takes me to the next subject: what does all this tell us about the status of cycling? The inescapable conclusion is that for all the gold medals and Tour de France titles the ordinary rider is still something of a marginal creature and thus fair game.

It was summed up well in an article last year by the psychologist Dr Ian Walker, who described cyclists as a classic "minority outgroup", meaning they suffer from "overgeneralisation of negative behaviour and attributes".

Outgroups are common press targets, the most obvious examples being asylum seekers or people reliant on social security. The paradox here is that the sort of cyclists who go to Box Hill on a Saturday are by no means so vulnerable. They tend to have above-average incomes, loud voices and (as s slightly bruised Wallop discovered) ready access to social media.

And that brings us to the final point: why should we care? Road cyclists on £2,000 carbon fibre machines are able to look after themselves. Let them vent their annoyance on Twitter, decide not to buy the Telegraph any more, and be done.

But there's one big difference for cyclists, and this is why articles like Wallop's concern and annoy me so much. It is the unique fate of those on bikes to not only bear the ignorant disdain of some people, but to also be reliant on a daily basis for those same people's proper care and attention to stay safe and in one piece.

I'm not arguing Wallop will be to blame the next time a Surrey cyclist is knocked over by a car. But I do worry that numerous articles which not just present one-sided and negative views of cyclists but do so in a way which intimate that cyclists are a coherent, inter-connected group can unconsciously infect public attitudes.

A driver faced with the challenge of overtaking a cyclist has all sort of options as to how close they pass, whether they slow down to do so, whether they take a (to the driver) slight risk on a blind bend. It's arguable that their sense of who the cyclist is and their right to be on the road plays a part in such split-second assessments.

It's why such seemingly marginal issues as the use of "road tax" to describe VED is tirelessly challenged by campaigners. And it's why, I'd argue, thoughtless pieces like Wallop's are, in their own small way, dangerous.

The next time I'm cycling in Surrey dressed in cycle clothing (not because I want to "emulate" Wiggo et al; it's just comfortable and practical) and a car approaches me from the rear I can but hope they see me as a human being, not a "Lycra lout".