Washington news station KREM-TV is under investigation after a pornographic clip aired for about ten seconds behind a meteorologist.
The incident took place last Sunday evening at 6 p.m. as the station was giving the weather forecast.
“The Spokane Police Department’s special victims unit is investigating how the image appeared and where it came from. Detectives have yet to determine if the incident was criminal, said Julie Humphreys, a spokesperson for the department. Police said KREM personnel are cooperating with the investigation,” the Spokesman-Review in Spokane reported.
Anne Bentley, vice president and chief communications officer at TEGNA, KREM 2’s parent company, said in a statement to the Spokesman-Review that they had apologized to viewers during their 11 p.m. newscast.
“We apologized to our viewers last night during our 11 p.m. newscast – Those of us here at KREM 2 want to apologize for something that happened in our 6 p.m. newscast tonight. An inappropriate video aired in the first part of the show. We are diligently working to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again,” Bentley wrote on behalf of KREM.
The station may face fines from the Federal Communications Commission that bans “indecent programming from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. when there is a reasonable risk that children may be in the audience.”
A similar incident happened at a news station in Roanoke, Virginia in 2012. The station was ultimately fined $325,000 — which was the harshest punishment ever handed down for a single incident.
WARNING: The following video of their report contains extremely graphic content:
@iamjohnoliver any chance you saw the Spokane Krem 2 local abc evening news on your nite off 10-17-21 ?? You may want to take a peek at the weather forecast…THEY SHOWED ACTUAL PORN pic.twitter.com/vMJZmjN0Wd
— Apple J. (@Kaidukas1) October 19, 2021