Within 48 hours, German television, a Spanish court, and the Galician government had to acknowledge the superiority of facts over narrative. Control systems are failing, and corrections are coming only when forced from the outside.
Cracks in the Facade. The lights went out in the Mainz studio, but the problem remained. The German public broadcaster ZDF, with a budget in the billions of euros, broadcast fiction instead of facts on its „heute journal” program. The edition from February 15, 2026, was intended to cover the activities of the American agency ICE. Instead, viewers saw a digital illusion generated by algorithms. This was not a minor technical oversight, but a systemic verification failure at the heart of the European media establishment.
Deputy Editor-in-Chief Anne Gellinek speaks of a „double error.” That is an euphemism. The decision to broadcast unmarked synthetic material undermines the foundation upon which the social contract between the citizen and public media rests. Minister Nathanael Liminski of the station's supervisory board is demanding explanations, but the milk has been spilled. In a world where the image can be everything, failing to label a falsehood is an act of disinformation, even if unintentional. Public media in Germany, including ARD and ZDF, are funded by a mandatory license fee, which imposes a special duty of reliability on them. In the age of deepfakes, their role as „gatekeepers of truth” has been a key argument for maintaining this funding model. A similar mechanism of the official narrative cracking is being observed in Valencia. The Provincial Court (Audiencia Provincial) challenged the findings of an investigating judge and ordered a trial for former Vice President Mónica Oltra. The case concerns the cover-up of pedophilia. For years, the local political establishment and parts of the judiciary suggested there was a lack of evidence. Now, under pressure from private prosecutors, the case is returning to the docket. An institutional attempt to close the matter has collided with appellate procedure.Technical and Political Correction. Correction does not always come from the courtroom. Sometimes it is forced by physics and the lack of a cable. In Galicia, the regional government, the Xunta de Galicia, had to surrender to infrastructural reality. The Altri cellulose factory project in Palas de Rei, promoted by President Alfonso Rueda as strategic, has been scrapped. The reason is mundane: a lack of electricity.
The central government in Madrid excluded the investment from the transmission network expansion plan for 2025–2030. Without access to the power grid and without funds from the PERTE program, political promises became worthless. The social movement Ulloa Viva, which has protested against „macro-cellulose” since 2022, won not only through ecological arguments but through hard technical constraints. The political will of local authorities proved too weak in the face of central planning and the resistance of matter.
4 years — This is how long the investment process for the GAMA project lasted before ending in failure due to a lack of energy infrastructure.
Even in Iran, where power rests on raw force, the official narrative is losing steerability. Students in Tehran chant „Death to the dictator,” ignoring threats from the Basij militia. The slogan about „empty halls and full cemeteries” is a brutal verification of the government's propaganda of success. The regime, threatened by a potential attack from the Donald Trump administration, is losing control over its own universities. This is the moment when fear ceases to function as the glue of the system.System Error or New Norm?. One could see these events as proof that self-regulation systems work. ZDF removed the material and apologized. A higher Spanish court corrected the error of a lower one. The Galician administration acknowledged the lack of technical feasibility. Optimists will say this is a triumph of procedures over individual errors.
However, this is a flawed diagnosis. In all these cases, the correction occurred only after reaching a critical mass. ZDF reacted after the broadcast, not before. The Oltra case returns after years of dismissals. The Altri project collapsed after four years of being pushed against the logic of the grid. Institutions do not act preventively; they act reactively, often only when backed into a corner by technology, the law, or the street. „Dieser Beitrag entspricht nicht unseren Standards und hätte so nie gesendet werden dürfen.” (This material does not meet our standards and in this form should never have been broadcast.) — Anne Gellinek This reactivity is the greatest threat to stability today. In a world where artificial intelligence generates images in seconds and social movements mobilize in hours, slow institutions lose authority. The viewer, voter, or protester sees the incompetence of a machine that grinds slowly and often grinds nothing.Perspective of Disintegration. The future will bring an intensification of this conflict. Every video in the media will be treated as a potential fake. Every prosecutor's decision to dismiss a case will be seen as a political cover-up. Every major industrial project will have to prove it has a source of power before a politician cuts the ribbon.
The requirement for transparency will become a double-edged sword. On one hand, it will force entities like ZDF or the Xunta de Galicia to exercise greater diligence. On the other, decision-making paralysis could become the norm as officials fear every step for fear of immediate verification. Trust, once lost through the broadcast of a fake ICE video or the cover-up of a scandal in Valencia, does not return after the issuance of a press release.
Yesterday, a fin whale appeared in the port of Naples. The great mammal swam into the harbor basin, paralyzing ferry traffic to Capri and Ischia. The Guardia Costiera is helplessly monitoring the situation. This is a perfect metaphor for the current state of Western institutions. They are large, heavy, and have found themselves in a place where they do not fit, blocking traffic and not knowing how to return to open waters.
Perspektywy mediów: The Left sees the Oltra and Altri cases as proof of the need for stronger social control over power and corporations. The Right interprets the ZDF error and the chaos in Iran as the collapse of traditional authorities and the result of liberal policies.