Nope. WhatsApp can only potentially read your group messages since 1:1 messages are end to end encrypted. You shouldn't spread FUD
If you need some obscure news source for this, it's very unlikely to be true and unless you or a trusted friend of yours has reasonable expertise in the relevant field (reverse engineering or cryptography might be relevant, perhaps both depending on the type of backdoor) you can't rely on some controversial source being correct.