After AI scandal in the “heute-journal” The mole affair continues to cause unrest at ZDF. As “Bild” reports, a suspected whistleblower within the station is now being dealt with sharply. The background is excerpts from an internal crisis meeting with hundreds of participants who ended up on the news portal “Nius”.

AI scenes not marked

The Trigger of the affair is mid-February. At that time, ZDF reported on arrests by the US immigration authorities ICE. However, the article showed images that were partly not authentic.

An editor used AI-generated scenes from the Internet, another sequence showed an arrest from 2022 that had no connection to the current cases.

“You think you’re a hero”

That content from the subsequent crisis meeting became public, continues to cause trouble internally. According to “Bild”, a member of the ZDF staff council reacted to this with a sharply worded message on the intranet.

The alleged informant is said to have been addressed directly: “You consider yourself a hero because you ‘really showed it’ to ZDF and the bosses? Do you really have that?”

Colleagues “spat in the face”

It goes on to say that the whistleblower “fed people with information who only have one goal: to harm ARD and ZDF.” He also “spat in the faces” of colleagues and gave information “to portals that are waging war against us.”

Internally, the message apparently received broad approval. As the “Bild” reports, citing the “Spiegel”, almost 600 employees reacted with a “thumbs up” on the intranet. The broad approval is also an internal record.

It is not yet known who passed on the information from the crisis meeting.