When faster outreach starts to cost relationships to journalists.

Fifty-three per cent of journalists are opposed to AI generated pitches. What changed this month is not the finding but the willingness to say so in public, under their own names.

Michael Reaney  ·  28 September 2026  ·  4 min read

Cision's 2026 State of the Media Report, based on a global survey of 1,899 journalists across 19 markets fielded in January and February 2026 and published on 13th May, found that 53 per cent of journalists are opposed to receiving AI generated pitches.

A separate survey by Global Results Communications put a number on the reason: 43 per cent hold negative views specifically because AI written pitches read as bot authored, lack perspective on the outlet they are sent to, and erode the basic trust a pitch depends on to be opened at all.

What has changed since that data was published is not the finding itself but the willingness of journalists to say so in public, and by name. Writing in PR Daily on 8th September, industry columnist Roger Johnson gathered a run of specific, on-record reactions. Fortune's Diane Brady reports that the volume of AI generated pitches reaching her has grown roughly fivefold over the past year. The New York Times's Mike Isaac has said he sends AI written pitches straight to the bin. Inc.'s Sam Blum compared the practice, in a LinkedIn post, to wearing clown shoes to a meeting. However pointed the language, the substance underneath it is consistent across every source: a cheap, average, easily generated pitch is not read as clever efficiency by the person receiving it. It is read as a signal that nobody bothered to find out who they were writing to.

That sits alongside a belief this brief has returned to often: AI has made average content free, so a leader, or a communications team, with something genuinely worth saying is the actual differentiator, not the tool used to say it faster. Media pitching turns out to be an unusually clean test of that idea, because a journalist's inbox is one of the few places where the recipient responds immediately and says exactly what they think, in public, under their own name.

A short checklist worth running against your own media relations practice:

1. If a journalist could tell your last pitch was drafted by AI without being told, would that read to them as efficient, or as careless?
2. Does your team use AI to research a journalist's beat and recent coverage before writing to them, or to write the pitch itself? The evidence above suggests the first use survives scrutiny and the second does not.
3. When did you last ask a journalist you pitch regularly what they actually think of the pitches your organisation sends?

Worth reading

• Cision, "2026 State of the Media Report" (global survey of 1,899 journalists, 19 markets, fielded January to February 2026, published 13th May 2026): the anchor study above. 53% of journalists oppose AI generated pitches; a companion figure from Global Results Communications puts the negative-view share at 43%, driven by pitches that read as bot written. Cision via PR Newswire, 13th May 2026
• O'Dwyer's PR News, "Communications Leaders Must Become Architects of Business Momentum" (23rd September 2026): argues that the most effective communications leaders now shape strategy discussions directly rather than waiting to be handed a message to distribute, judging a draft against the business outcome it is meant to produce rather than the message it is meant to carry. O'Dwyer's PR News, 23rd September 2026

The moves

• OpenAI has gone nine months without naming a permanent chief communications officer, Fortune reported on 23rd September, after Hannah Wong left the role in January 2026. Communications is currently run on an interim basis by Lindsey Held Bolton. A search for Wong's successor, initially led by then chief marketing officer Kate Rouch, stalled when Rouch herself departed the company in April, and has reportedly struggled over an unresolved question of seniority: whether the role should report directly to president Greg Brockman or sit under the marketing function. OpenAI has since engaged an external search firm; Fortune reports its leading candidate turned the role down.