{"id":355004,"date":"2026-03-19T21:25:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T21:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/355004\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T21:25:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T21:25:09","slug":"mediahuis-suspends-senior-journalist-after-admission-of-using-ai-material-in-his-work-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/355004\/","title":{"rendered":"Mediahuis suspends senior journalist after admission of using AI material in his work \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mediahuis<\/a>, publisher of the Irish Independent<\/a> and Sunday Independent, has suspended one of its most senior journalists after he admitted putting \u201cwords in people\u2019s mouths\u201d when using artificial intelligence<\/a> (AI) software in some of his work. <\/p>\n

Peter Vandermeersch took up the post of Fellow \u201cJournalism and Society\u201d five months ago after a period as Ireland chief executive from 2022 to 2025. The Irish company has been controlled by Mediahuis of Belgium since 2019. <\/p>\n

From 2019 to 2022 he held the top-ranking post of publisher in the Irish organisation, previously known as Independent News & Media. <\/p>\n

The suspension came as a Dutch paper in the Mediahuis stable on Thursday accused Vandermeersch of publishing \u201cdozens of quotes\u201d which proved false.<\/p>\n

Vandermeersch himself published a piece on his online Substack<\/a> newsletter under the headline \u201cI am admitting my mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company said eight of his articles have been removed from the independent.ie website and app. <\/p>\n

The Substack article followed the investigation by Dutch paper NRC, a Mediahuis title where Vandermeersch himself was editor-in-chief for nine years in the 2010s.<\/p>\n

NRC\u2019s work began after a journalist there found \u201che could not verify certain quotes\u201d that Vandermeersch had used.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnalysis shows that Vandermeersch published fictitious quotes on the two weblogs \u2013 a Dutch-language and an English-language version \u2013 that he maintains as a fellow,\u201d NRC reported.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 15 of the 53 blog posts he wrote, there are quotes that cannot be found in the publications from which Vandermeersch claims to have obtained them, such as news articles and scientific studies.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeven of the quoted individuals confirm that they did not make the statements attributed to them in these publications \u2013 nor, as far as they can remember, elsewhere. Altogether, this involves dozens of quotes.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a statement, Mediahuis group chief executive Gert Ysebaert said \u201cthis should never have happened\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mediahuis applied strict rules for the use of AI, Ysebaert said, adding that diligence, human oversight and transparency were essential.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that these principles were not followed runs counter to the standards we uphold and to our commitment to readers that we stand for reliable journalism,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are discussing this with Peter Vandermeersch and have decided to temporarily suspend him from his role as fellow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vandermeersch acknowledged using AI language models such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google Notebook while writing on press and democracy, saying he \u201cfell into the trap of hallucinations\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI summarised reports using AI tools and worked from those summaries, trusting they were accurate,\u201d he wrote on Substack.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn doing so, I wrongly put words into people\u2019s mouths, when I should have presented them as paraphrases. In some cases, it reflected my interpretation of their words. That was not just careless \u2013 it was wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vandermeersch has been contacted for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mediahuis, publisher of the Irish Independent and Sunday Independent, has suspended one of its most senior journalists after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,2670,61,161264,60,161263,45673,43453,80],"class_list":["post-355004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-chatgpt","tag-ie","tag-independent-news-media","tag-ireland","tag-irish-independent","tag-mediahuis","tag-sunday-independent","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}