Nearly 7 in 10 Regulatory Stories Run Without a Single Industry Voice
Across all five segments, 69.5% of stories ran without a brand quote or company spokesperson. That’s 922 of 1,327 articles where regulators, analysts, and journalists shaped the narrative entirely on their own. The companies most affected by regulatory outcomes weren’t in the conversation at all.
This isn’t a story about one company getting caught flat-footed. It’s a structural gap across entire industries. And it’s getting more consequential every year.
Regulatory-themed coverage rose 265% between 2023 and 2025: from 37 stories in 2023 to 135 in 2025. By late March 2026, the dataset already contains 106 regulatory-proxy stories, putting 2026 on track to be a record year. In 2023, roughly 1 in 4 dated stories in this dataset were regulatory-adjacent. In 2026 YTD, it’s more than 2 in 5. Thought leadership for government affairs could not be more important right now.
More regulatory coverage, with fewer company voices in it. That’s the trend.
The Gap Looks Very Different Depending on Your Sector
One thing this data makes clear is that “regulated industries” is clearly contextual to the sector.
Fintech and Regulated Tech: The Benchmark
With 415 stories analyzed and a 48.9% quote share, fintech is the only sector approaching parity. For roughly every 2 stories that ran without a company voice, 2 ran with one. That signals something important: tech companies in this space have built the infrastructure to respond to regulatory coverage. Pre-approved messaging frameworks, trained spokespeople, established journalist relationships. It shows.
The benchmark matters because it proves the gap is a choice.
Nicotine and Tobacco: Closer Than You’d Expect
At 33.1% quote share across 142 stories, this sector has more company participation than the data might suggest given its regulatory complexity. It’s still 2 in 3 stories running without an nicotine and tobacco industry voice, but the ratio (2.02x unquoted to quoted) is the second-lowest in the dataset.
Pharma: High Volume, Persistent Gap
Pharma generated the second-highest story count in the dataset: 343 articles. With a 30.6% quote share, 2.27x more stories ran without a pharmaceutical company voice than with one. The volume makes this a high-exposure sector. There are simply more opportunities to weigh in, and most of them go unused.
Drug approvals, pricing debates, clinical trial coverage, and FDA actions generate consistent news cycles. The companies that show up to those stories shape how the regulatory conversation develops. The ones that don’t let it develop without them.
Cannabis and Hemp: Rising Scrutiny, Shrinking Voice
This is the most urgent combination in the dataset. Cannabis and hemp has a 19.8% quote share across 121 stories, meaning more than 4 out of 5 regulatory stories ran without any industry perspective. And in 2026 alone, through late March, cannabis and hemp already accounts for 53 regulatory-proxy stories. That’s more than pharma (22) and fintech (16) combined in the same period.
The sector generating the most regulatory heat right now is also one of the least prepared to participate in the conversation about it. Bans, Medicare and CMS coverage changes, THC threshold debates, and rescheduling discussions are all active storylines. Companies in this space are being talked about at a policy level. Most of them aren’t talking back.
Supplements: The Widest Gap in the Dataset
8.5% quote share. That’s 1 in 12 stories with any industry voice. For every article that included a company perspective, 10.77 ran without one. Of 306 analyzed stories, 280 contained no brand or representative quote at all.
That number is worth sitting with. If your company is in the supplements space, the regulatory narrative about your industry is being built almost entirely without you.
Why This Matters More Now Than It Did Three Years Ago
Regulatory coverage was already trending up before the current AI search environment changed how people consume it. Now those two things are colliding.
Investors, partners, policymakers, and prospective employees aren’t just reading individual articles anymore. They’re asking AI systems to synthesize what’s being said about your industry. Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity pull from the same media ecosystem this data comes from. If your brand voice isn’t in the source material, it won’t appear in the AI-generated summary of your regulatory landscape either.
That’s not a future consideration. It’s already happening. And the companies that have built consistent Earned Media presence in regulatory coverage will have their perspective represented in those AI responses. The ones that haven’t will be summarized without them, just like they’re being covered without them now.
Silence Isn’t Caution. It’s Ceding Ground.
Most companies in regulated industries stay quiet on regulatory stories for understandable reasons. Compliance review is slow. Legal wants to approve everything. The risk of saying the wrong thing feels higher than the risk of saying nothing.
But here’s what the data shows: your competitors usually aren’t filling that gap either. Which means the first company in your space that builds a real regulatory media presence doesn’t just reduce its own narrative risk. It becomes the authoritative voice for the entire category. It’s the company that journalists call first. The one that AI systems cite. The one that policymakers reference when they want to understand the industry’s position.
That kind of authority compounds. And it starts with showing up to the regulatory conversation before you’re the subject of it.
What the Data Is Actually Telling You
The companies that understand their specific position in this landscape, and build a communications strategy around it, are the ones that will define how their regulatory environment gets framed. The ones that wait will inherit the narrative someone else wrote for them.
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