Mediahuis suspends senior journalist over AI-generated quotes in newsletter

Peter Vandermeersch. File picture

Mediahuis has suspended a senior journalist after he admitted using AI-generated quotes in his work that “wrongly put words in people’s mouths”.

Peter Vandermeersch, a senior figure at the publisher of the Irish Independent and Sunday Independent, had previously served as chief executive of Mediahuis Ireland, the group which owns the Irish Independent, the Sunday World, and several regional titles, and also held senior roles at its Dutch title NRC Media.

After leaving the Irish role last year, he became the European media group’s first fellow for “Journalism and Society” and began publishing a newsletter on the topic.

Following claims in a Dutch outlet that he had published false quotes in the newsletter, Mr Vandermeersch responded with a post headlined “I am admitting my mistake”.

In the post on his Substack, Mr Vandermeersch said he was “not careful enough” and had used AI language models such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google NotebookLM while writing his newsletter.

“I was enthusiastic about the possibilities these tools offered and wanted to experiment with them extensively,” he said.

“Even I — with all my years of experience and knowledge — 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’s mouths, when I should have presented them as paraphrases. In some cases, it reflected my interpretation of their words. That was not just careless—it was wrong.” 

He added that the necessary human oversight he had himself advocated for with colleagues had fallen short, but said he still believes AI can be a powerful tool in journalism.

“But not by using AI in the way I did in the early months of this blog,” he said.

Gert Ysebaert, chief executive of Mediahuis, said in a statement that this should “never have happened”.

“At Mediahuis, we apply strict rules for the use of AI, where diligence, human oversight and transparency are essential,” he said.

“The 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.

“We are discussing this with Peter Vandermeersch and have decided to temporarily suspend him from his role as Fellow.”