{"id":492541,"date":"2026-03-24T12:07:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T12:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/492541\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T12:07:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T12:07:07","slug":"once-one-of-the-most-influential-people-in-irish-media-he-ignored-his-own-golden-rule-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/492541\/","title":{"rendered":"Once one of the most influential people in Irish media, he ignored his own golden rule \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A journalist using artificial intelligence<\/a> (AI) to generate an article is like a chef in a restaurant serving you a reheated ready meal from a supermarket. It\u2019s fundamentally phoney. This is true even if the contents of the article happen to be accurate \u2013 because the journalist doesn\u2019t really know whether they are true or not.<\/p>\n

Anyone I know who has worked with Peter Vandermeersch<\/a> has a very high opinion of him. From 2019 until last year he was one of the most influential people in Irish media, first as publisher and then as chief executive of Mediahuis<\/a> Ireland. The Belgian company publishes the Irish Independent<\/a>, the Sunday Independent, the Belfast Telegraph, the Sunday World, Sunday Life, The Herald and 11 regional newspapers. <\/p>\n

Vandermeersch\u2019s job was to make those titles fit to survive in the digital era. Anyone who cares about democracy and the diversity of information and opinion that keeps it alive would recognise that this is more than a business imperative. It\u2019s a political, social and cultural obligation.<\/p>\n

Vandermeersch is no cub reporter. He\u2019s 65. He was a foreign correspondent in Paris and New York before serving as editor in chief of the Brussels-based newspaper De Standaard in 1999-2010 and then of Amsterdam-based daily NRC Handelsblad in 2010-2019. He\u2019s a sophisticated, cultured and thoughtful man who knows pretty much everything there is to know about journalism. Which makes what happened to Vandermeersch<\/a> last week rather hair-raising. He was suspended from the position he was given after he stepped down from the Irish operation last year as \u201cJournalism and Society\u201d fellow \u2013 essentially Mediahuis\u2019s in-house intellectual. <\/p>\n

His new job was to think about the big existential questions. As he explained when the appointment was announced by Mediahuis last August: \u201cI want to further strengthen Mediahuis\u2019s position as a thought leader, addressing some of the industry\u2019s key challenges \u2013 such as the relevance of journalism, its role in an era of polarisation, trust, press freedom, engaging with diverse audiences and ensuring a sustainable future for local journalism \u2013 while exploring the responsible use of AI in newsrooms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Part of Vandermeersch\u2019s role was to publish regular blogs under the Press and Democracy rubric reflecting on these topics. In one of the first blogs he concluded, with regard to the threat posed by the use of large language models to generate content, that: \u201cThe battle lines are drawn. What\u2019s at stake is not just the future of the media, but the future of truth itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last week NRC, the Dutch newspaper he used to edit, published an analysis of Vandermeersch\u2019s blogs. It found that \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. Seven 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

The irony is that one of the recurring themes in these very articles is the absolute requirement for journalists to verify what they write. Responding to a report on the collapse of trust in journalism among young people, Vandermeersch set down a basic rule: \u201cShow the process. Let young people see how stories are verified.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0AI\u2019s war on reality: what now when you can\u2019t even trust your own eyes?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

On the threat from AI to the economic viability of journalism, he wrote that \u201ca society that allows its news to be mined and regurgitated without remuneration doesn\u2019t merely impoverish journalists; it starves itself of truth. Freedom of expression is meaningless if there are no reporters left to verify the facts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet, as he wrote on the blog<\/a> after his suspension, \u201cI used AI language models such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google Notebook while writing. I was enthusiastic about the possibilities these tools offered and wanted to experiment with them extensively. Even I \u2013 with all my years of experience and knowledge \u2013 fell into the trap of hallucinations. I summarised reports using AI tools and worked from those summaries, trusting they were accurate. In doing so, I wrongly put words into people\u2019s mouths …\u201d<\/p>\n

A journalist using \u201cquotes\u201d regurgitated by machines to write about the dangers of AI is like a doctor treating patients by injecting them with a deadly virus. Vandermeersch actually wrote about fake quotes from made-up individuals appearing in British newspapers: \u201cTheir quotes cropped up in articles on energy prices, transport, home renovation, health and consumer behaviour. Only on closer inspection did it become clear that they did not exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0The inconvenient truth about artificial intelligenceOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Attributing fake quotes to real people creates a double harm: the non-existent quotes are released into public discourse and the individuals who are supposedly being quoted are potentially traduced. One of AI\u2019s talents is to ascribe stupid or disreputable statements to people who did not make them, and then feed them back into its own endless loops of lies. AI is not getting more accurate \u2013 it\u2019s just getting better at making false quotes and \u201cfacts\u201d look plausible. <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a quote that isn\u2019t fake: \u201cA newsroom that wants to retain credibility must invest in time, verification and scepticism. Without that, journalism loses its role as a countervailing force \u2013 and becomes a conduit.\u201d That\u2019s also from Vandermeersch and it is 100 per cent accurate.<\/p>\n

So what can have come over him? I suspect the answer lies in his life as a newspaper business executive who can\u2019t help having an eye on the bottom line. That part of his self-described role \u2013 \u201cexploring the responsible use of AI in newsrooms\u201d \u2013 is not an abstract intellectual quest. It\u2019s a search for ways to cut more jobs and make higher profits.<\/p>\n

The responsible use of AI in newsrooms is already clear: don\u2019t do it. Verification and scepticism are what journalists live by and what machines are incapable of. As someone really did say, what\u2019s at stake is the future of truth.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Peter Vandermeersch controversy illustrates AI challenge more vividly than anything he wroteOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A journalist using artificial intelligence (AI) to generate an article is like a chef in a restaurant serving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":485948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,173911,172312,172311,173912,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-492541","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-fintan-otoole","12":"tag-irish-independent","13":"tag-mediahuis","14":"tag-peter-vandermeersch","15":"tag-technology","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/485948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}