Bernard Vincent Ward was born on April 5,1951 and is an American former radio personality whose career ran from 1985 to 2007.
28 Facts About Bernie Ward
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Formerly a radio talk show host with KGO 810 AM in San Francisco, California, Ward, once billed by KGO as "The Lion of the Left" and "unabashedly liberal," was the host of the daily news talk program, The Bernie Ward Show, and the three-hour program, GodTalk, on Sunday mornings.
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In December 2007, Bernie Ward was dismissed from KGO following his federal grand jury child pornography indictment.
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Subsequently, in a plea bargain with federal prosecutors, Bernie Ward admitted to a single felony charge of online distribution of child pornography and signed an admission of distributing between 15 and 150 images via email.
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Bernie Ward consequently served a six-year prison sentence, and was released in 2014.
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Bernie Ward taught for one year at St Victor Catholic elementary school in San Jose, California.
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Bernie Ward then studied for three years at the Franciscan School of Theology in Berkeley, obtaining a Theology degree in 1977.
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Bernie Ward was ordained to the Catholic priesthood with the Missionaries of the Precious Blood the same year, but left the priesthood after two years.
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Bernie Ward later taught theology at Cardinal Newman High School in Santa Rosa, California and its sister school, Ursuline High School.
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Bernie Ward taught at Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose, California.
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Bernie Ward later worked for then-Representative Barbara Boxer from 1982 to 1985.
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Bernie Ward went on to host "God Talk," a show on religion and related topics.
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Briefly in 1996, Bernie Ward's talk show was nationally syndicated until his ratings declined.
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In protest, supporters of his show flooded the KGO studios with canned food donations, continuing a seven-year Thanksgiving fundraising drive started by Bernie Ward that had netted more than $1 million in donations shared by the St Anthony Foundation and two other area charities.
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On December 31,2007, Bernie Ward was fired from KGO because of his indictment on child pornography charges.
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On September 20,2007, Bernie Ward was indicted by a grand jury on two federal counts of Attempting to Distribute and one count of Receiving child pornography via the Internet from December 2004 to January 2005.
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The police investigation of Bernie Ward originated with a complaint from a Stanislaus County woman who was posing online as a dominatrix under the screenname "Sexfairy2005" and who had engaged in online chats with Bernie Ward.
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Federal investigators could find no evidence that Bernie Ward was working on such a book.
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Bernie Ward's attorney claimed that federal authorities found no illegal images on his computer, which they seized in early 2005.
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On May 8,2008, Bernie Ward announced an agreement to plead guilty to one count of Distribution of Child Pornography in exchange for the dropping of two additional counts of Possession and Distribution.
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Bernie Ward served his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution, Lompoc, a low-security federal prison in California.
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On December 9,1996, Bernie Ward stated that Christianity was "morally superior" to Judaism because it was based on unconditional forgiveness.
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Bernie Ward insisted that he did not have a problem with any individual religion, only with fundamentalists.
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Bernie Ward later compared fundamentalist Orthodox Judaism with Nazism on September 12,2001, but offered an apology the following day.
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On September 30,2002, Bernie Ward appeared on CNN with Wolf Blitzer and discussed possible military action against Iraq.
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Bernie Ward led a pledge drive for Thanksgiving Charities every year, which supported four charities in the San Francisco Bay Area: Sacred Heart Community Services in San Jose, St Anthony's Foundation in San Francisco, St Vincent De Paul dining room in Oakland, and Fresh Start in Walnut Creek.
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Bernie Ward was a participant in the KGO leukemia cure-a-thon, which has raised over $13 million for research into leukemia and lymphoma causes.
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Bernie Ward has won numerous national awards, such as an Associated Press award for coverage of the 1992 Los Angeles riots.