14 DAY TRIAL // Count on CNN to be the first to notice and report an ISIS flag making a very conspicuous and “troubling” appearance at the Gay Pride Parade in London last week. Smack in the midst of that explosion of color was a black and white banner that was a “bad mimicry but very clear attempt to mimic the ISIS flag,” in the words of correspondent Lucy Pawle.
Had this been true, Pawle would have been the envy of her journalist mates because she’d broken a huge story.
CNN correspondent puts her foot in it
Unfortunately for her, it wasn’t: she just had no idea of what certain… adult toys look like, so she mistook their graphic representation on a spoof ISIS banner for the real deal.
Knowing this, it’s very entertaining to watch the CNN video report below, where the anchor and Pawle talk about this strange and very troubling occurrence, happening right there under the eyes of thousands and of which no one actually takes notice.
Except for her, of course.
She first noticed the man carrying the flag because he was dressed all in black. She then saw the flag and was quite shocked that no one else had seen it or been alarmed by it. After all, here were the terrorists, right in the middle of a sea of people.
“If you look at the flag closely it’s clearly not Arabic, in fact it looks like it could be gobbledygook, but it’s very distinctive the Isis flag,” Pawle says. Had she looked even closer, she might have noticed that it wasn’t Arabic, or gobbledygook, but graphic representations of toys many adults use in the privacy of their bedrooms.
Clearly, the flag resembled the ISIS banner to a certain extent, but she’d been close enough to see that it wasn’t the real thing.
Needless to say, Pawle and CNN are now being viciously mocked on the Internet and social media, especially since this isn’t the first time they’ve put the proverbial foot in the mouth. As of the time of writing, the network is yet to address the hilarious but very embarrassing blunder, but they did remove the video from their website.
That’s probably the only retraction on the original story we’re going to get. For the record, here is the original ISIS banner.
