Since Featured relaunched HARO (Help a Reporter Out) in April 2025, the platform has sent over 100 million emails connecting journalists with sources. The 2026 statistics provide a revealing look at how AI, spam, and crowded inboxes are reshaping the relationship between journalists and PR professionals. The data underscores a critical trend: as communication volumes soar, both journalists and sources are prioritizing filtering and authenticity.
According to HARO's data, 21% of pitches submitted are entirely AI-generated. This surge in AI-assisted responses has led 35% of journalists to actively block AI-generated pitches when submitting requests. Moreover, HARO bans a user every 23 minutes, primarily for spam and terms of service violations. Additionally, 32% of journalist requests are rejected during the approval process after reviewers assess the journalist, publication, and request for quality and legitimacy.
The most striking finding is that human-written pitches are approximately three times more likely to be used by journalists compared to AI-generated ones. Brett Farmiloe, CEO of HARO, emphasized, "Human-written pitches are about 3x more likely to get featured than AI-written ones. The sources who stand out typically come from fully human teams who can provide credible information, respond to what the journalist actually asked for, and make the journalist’s job easier. As inboxes get more crowded, being helpful becomes the differentiator."
To maintain quality, every pitch submitted through HARO is analyzed using AI detection technology provided by Pangram. Journalists can also report unhelpful pitches, which triggers a manual review by the HARO team.
These data points highlight a growing challenge for PR professionals: while access to journalists has increased, earning their attention is now harder than ever. In increasingly crowded inboxes, relevance, credibility, and expertise have become critical ways for sources to stand out. The implications are clear—AI can boost productivity, but it cannot replace the human touch that journalists value most.
