More than three years ago, Bernie Ward, a popular San Francisco liberal radio talk show host and former Catholic priest, got on the Internet and downloaded and sent out images of child pornography. He even talked about it in an Internet chat room.
That's just bad shit, and there is no way he's going to get out of it unscathed. No matter all of the good he's done, he screwed up terribly here.
Some background info:
Born and raised in San Francisco, Ward graduated from St. Ignatius High School and, in 1973, from the University of San Francisco.
In 1977, he earned a theology degree from the Franciscan School of Theology in Berkeley. The same year, he was ordained to the priesthood with the Society of the Precious Blood. Ward left the priesthood after two years. He has said that he wanted a wife and child and believed he could continue to serve God outside the clergy. He married a physician and they had four children.
After leaving the priesthood, Ward taught at Cardinal Newman High School in Santa Rosa and at Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose. From 1982 to 1985 he worked for then-Rep. Barbara Boxer as her chief legislative assistant.
He joined KGO in 1985, initially as a fill-in talk show host, then as a general assignment reporter, then as political reporter. He has won numerous national awards for his reporting, including an Associated Press award for his coverage of riots in Los Angeles.
In the mid-1990s, he partnered with reporters from the San Francisco Examiner on a series of investigative stories exposing financial and sexual improprieties within the San Francisco Archdiocese. He won a national award for those stories.
All of that shot to shit because of some stupidity.
