CNN spots ‘ISIS flag’ at London LGBT march – featuring dildos & anal plugs
CNN’s Newsroom reported what it termed the ‘unnerving sight’ of the black-and-white flag of the terrorist group Islamic State flying over an LGBT Pride march in London. The news channel apparently failed to notice the flag featured sex toys.
The sighting of an ‘ISIS flag’ in ‘a sea of rainbow colors’ at one of London’s busiest shopping streets was ‘flagged’ by CNN International’s Lucy Pawle.
“All of a sudden this man quite distinctive from the rest of the crowd – he was dressed in black and white while everyone else was brightly colored. This man in black and white was waiving what appears to be a very bad mimicry, but a very clear attempt to mimic [the] ISIS flag,” the journalist reported on the phone.
@lucypawle the ISIS flag at the Pride parade looked like gibberish because the "text" was actually outlines of sex toys. Obviously satire.
— Jim (@jimdotsg) June 27, 2015
“It’s certainly not Arabic,” Pawle added. “In fact, it looks like it could be gobbledygook. But it’s very distinctively the ISIS flag. Anyway, I seem to be the only person to have spotted this.”
The photos Pawle sent to back the story up indeed show a black and white flag. The ‘gobbledygook’, however, is an assortment of various sex toys, such as dildos and anal plugs. It would be safe to assume the man in ‘black and white’ was satirizing the terrorist organization, which has gay people on the long list of enemies it wants to see dead.
Now every time CNN reports on an ISIS flag placed next to an atrocity, they'll have to clarify if it's the dildo one or the Arabic one.
— Stacy Herbert (@stacyherbert) June 28, 2015
CNN has had its moments of drifting from news reporting towards outright and arguably ridiculous speculation. In April last year, it ran a panel discussion on whether missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 could have fallen into a black hole, for example.
The Saturday gaffe came a day after a series of terrorist attacks around the world. It includes a tourist massacre in Tunisia, in which almost 40 people, mostly Britons, were killed by a gunman with alleged ties to IS.
