During a 6 p.m. newscast by KREM, the Spokane, Washington, based station accidentally aired pornography during its Sunday broadcast.
The clip televised for about 13 seconds behind meteorologist Michelle Boss during her weather update, reported Newsweek.
The graphic clip appeared to display a woman’s backside and neither Boss nor her co-anchor, Cody Proctor, seemed to realize it happening behind them, according to the outlet.
KREM expressed an apology for the misstep later that evening during their 11 p.m. showing.
“Those of us here at KREM 2 want to apologize for something that happened in our 6 p.m. newscast tonight,” the station said, according to Newsweek. “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.”
A local reporter for the Inlander, Daniel Walters, shared a blurred clip of the occurrence on Twitter.
It’s a very strange clip — so strange I thought it might have been a hoax when I first saw it. Nobody on screen seems to react, and it takes shockingly long before they cut away. (I’ve blurred the image, obviously) pic.twitter.com/AtLnG02nrE
— Daniel Walters (@danielwinlander) October 18, 2021
A local Virginia station, WDBJ-TV, included an explicit sexual clip during their broadcast in 2012 and ended up receiving a $325,000 fine for their indiscretion in 2015, reported The Roanoke Times.
Twitter also received a lawsuit for allegedly failing to remove child pornography from its site in 2021. (RELATED: Fairfax County Mother Reveals Books In School Libraries Depicting Child Porn And Pedophilia)
Both The Spokane Police Department’s Special Victims Unit (SVU) and Technical Assistance Response Unit (TARU) confirmed that they working in conjunction with KREM to investigate the root cause of the issue and how the explicit material managed to surface onto the screen, according to Newsweek.
KREM did not respond to the Daily Caller at the time of publication.