Mediahuis, publisher of the Irish Independent and Sunday Independent, has suspended one of its most senior journalists after he admitted putting “words in people’s mouths” when using artificial intelligence (AI) software in some of his work.
Peter Vandermeersch took up the post of Fellow “Journalism and Society” 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.
From 2019 to 2022 he held the top-ranking post of publisher in the Irish organisation, previously known as Independent News & Media.
The suspension came as a Dutch paper in the Mediahuis stable on Thursday accused Vandermeersch of publishing “dozens of quotes” which proved false.
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Vandermeersch himself published a piece on his online Substack newsletter under the headline “I am admitting my mistake.”
The company said eight of his articles have been removed from the independent.ie website and app.
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.
NRC’s work began after a journalist there found “he could not verify certain quotes” that Vandermeersch had used.
“Analysis shows that Vandermeersch published fictitious quotes on the two weblogs – a Dutch-language and an English-language version – that he maintains as a fellow,” NRC reported.
“In 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 – nor, as far as they can remember, elsewhere. Altogether, this involves dozens of quotes.”
In a statement, Mediahuis group chief executive Gert Ysebaert said “this should never have happened”.
Mediahuis applied strict rules for the use of AI, Ysebaert said, adding that diligence, human oversight and transparency were essential.
“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,” he said.
“We are discussing this with Peter Vandermeersch and have decided to temporarily suspend him from his role as fellow.”
Vandermeersch acknowledged using AI language models such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google Notebook while writing on press and democracy, saying he “fell into the trap of hallucinations”.
“I summarised reports using AI tools and worked from those summaries, trusting they were accurate,” he wrote on Substack.
“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.”
Vandermeersch has been contacted for comment.
