San Francisco talk radio host Bernie Ward was instant messaging with a dominatrix around Christmastime a couple of years back when, about an hour into the conversation, he decides to send her a picture in which two underage kids are allegedly touching an adult "in a sexual way." Of course the dominatrix then called the cops, and now Ward is facing child pornography charges, and is claiming the whole thing was a misunderstanding because he was doing journalistic research for a book. The local ABC affiliate offered extensive coverage casting doubt on Ward's defense, then nearly ruined all that hard work by running this ad alongside their child porn reporting:


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The ad is surrounded on either side by links to video coverage of the child porn case. The TV station that ran the ad and Ward story, KGO/ABC7, is owned by Disney, hence the unfortunate house ad. (Incidentally, the radio host worked for a radio station with the same call letters, but it is owned by a different company.)

As Debbie Nathan writes, Ward's defense is hardly novel. His case seems nearly identical to that of DC radio personality Larry Matthews in the late 1990s. Nathan predictably also sees a parallel to her longtime subject, former Times writer Kurt Eichenwald.

Ward, a former Catholic priest, hosted both a religious show and a liberal talk show.