PTC Wants Investigation of KREM Porn Clip
The Parents Television Council wants KREM Spokane, Washington, and owner Tegna to investigate how a clip of pornographic material aired for about 10 seconds during a weather segment on the station’s evening news broadcast Sunday. “Let there be no suggestion…
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that the airing of the pornographic content might have been an ‘accident’ or a ‘mistake,’ said PTC President Tim Winter in a release Wednesday. “Someone with the wherewithal to pass that content through the control room did so intentionally. If it were not aired by someone’s design, why is it always porn that gets aired ‘by accident’ instead of innocuous content?” “We have apologized to our viewers and are diligently working to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again,” emailed a Tegna spokesperson. In 2016, then-Schurz-owned WDBJ Roanoke, Virginia, paid a $325,000 FCC forfeiture after it aired an image that contained pornography during a news story about a firefighter’s adult film career (see 1604040057). Schurz appealed the amount but eventually paid in order to close its sale to Gray Television. Schurz’s then-attorney, Jack Goodman, said in an interview Wednesday that FCC authority to fine stations over airing pornographic content remains “constitutionally dubious.”