Police investigate local US news channel for accidentally airing 13 seconds of porn in weather report

A television station based in Washington accidentally aired 13 seconds of porn during a weather broadcast on 17 October. Police are currently investigating the matter, although no one has been held responsible so far, according to a report in the Daily Mail. According to a statement by the Spokane City Police Department said the department’s Technical Assistance Response Unit (TARU) and Special Victims Unit (SVU) are investigating the cause of the explicit broadcast and where it came from. It added that the channel was cooperating with the investigation. The statement said that the broadcast of the clip led to the department receiving calls from many citizens, who were left disturbed by the images. The incident took place at 6.30 pm weather broadcast of the CBS affiliate channel KREM. Meteorologist Michelle Boss seemed unaware of the explicit clip airing behind her as she told viewers that the state would experience bonus days” of hot weather, with warm temperatures expected to hit the region. Boss’s co-anchor Cody Proctor also expressed no reaction to the clip as it aired in the top left corner of the screen. The clip was later stopped and the channel then zoomed in on the weather maps being displayed. The channel later apologised for the gaffe at 11 pm the same day and said that they were “diligently working to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.” This is not the only time that news channels have broadcast explicit videos during a show. In July 2012, WDBJ was fined $325,000 by the Federal Communications Agency for “sexually explicit clip of an adult film website" during an evening news report. In 2016, viewers tuning in to CNN to watch the new episode of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, were met with porn instead of the travel show. The channel continued to air explicit images of porn star Riley Quinn for half an hour, before cutting the broadcast. While earlier reports suggested it was a mistake on part of the channel, later reviews indicated that only one user in Boston saw the images.