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The report was featured directly (most articles) or in passing (mentioned to some extent in co-incidental US articles) in at least 436 articles globally, mostly FR (65), IT (58), NL (53), BE (39), RO (37), UK & US (36), PT (18). Crude estimated reach is just over a billion (excuse my earlier mistake on this), with the top outlets, in reverse order: La Repubblica, ABC.es, Corriere Della Sera, Fanpage.it, La Nación, Le Figaro, Daily Mirror, Yahoo! News, 腾讯网 (Tencent China). Broadcast and premium content will mostly be excluded from this Meltwater summary.

Reporting came in a first wave, as prepared, then a second as AFP ran it. Leading national titles ECF and I had placed the story with were influential in setting the tone and spread within language groups, but agencies were also influential, notably AFP (in various languages - thanks Tony!), Dutch and Italian wires. Tone appears to be almost entirely as we would want it: leading on the study’s findings. So most headlines were strongly favourable, mostly something like “Asthma study sparks debate about safety of cooking with gas” (appearing early); "Gas cookers as toxic as ‘second hand smoke’, study reveals” (also early, set by Euronews and used by largest single hit globally); "Asthma studies spark controversy over gas cooking” (later). There is a clear first and second wave in the UK and France as different AFP stories appear, focused mainly on our study and later the US debate. The latter was more critical, reflecting the political polarisation there (an isolated extreme case mentions our study at the end). But it seems editors made the critical elements more or less prominent. Some outlets ran wire copy unchanged, then edited it in a way that made the tone a little more critical. This is normal and it wasn’t too bad. There was a very strong headline in Germany, but that was balanced with notable criticism from what is described as a doctor-journalist: “The first thing to note is that the organizations that took on this study are three organizations that have long been trying to eliminate fossil fuels, including gas. This is by far not just about health aspects. It is also clearly about climate aspects. Fossil fuels should generally be branded as dangerous and not good.” Report graphics aren’t normally used by strong media as they have their own art departments, but Corriere used them and ANSA too in a video. In Romania, significant amounts of coverage was started by the reproduction of our press release, which may reflect an unhealthy media environment there. There was only one example I could see of original reporting seeking to undermine us (one), so no great orchestrated push back by the gas industry for now.

I haven’t had any feedback on anecdotal evidence of policy progress from this public attention, but would find that super interesting if anyone has any evidence of that.
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