“I spent the morning of London’s Pride parade hand-stitching dildos onto a flag,” he said. “This man in black and white was waving what appears to be a very bad mimicry-but a clear attempt to mimic-the ISIS flag,” Pawle reported live from the scene.Ĭoombs also revealed in the column how he ended up fooling the news network. When he created the flag for London’s celebration, Coombs never expected that someone would think it was real. “What does this say about every other report that they broadcast? And why have they not mentioned it since? They seem to think that if nobody says anything about it then it can’t have really happened,” he continued. “CNN correspondent Lucy Pawle described my flag as a ‘very bad mimicry’ but the only bad mimicry I could see was CNN’s impression of a reputable news organization.Īlso Read: CNN's ISIS Flag Fail a Lesson in Dildos and Don'ts: Wrap Trends
“But how could a report so hysterical and so clearly false possibly get onto the air, discussed by a terrorism expert?” British artist Paul Coombs, who used sex-toy motifs in his work before, asked in an op-ed published Tuesday on The Guardian. Now the flag’s creator has unloaded on the cable news network over the gaffe. A CNN report on Sunday went viral when an international reporter mistook a dildo-covered flag for an ISIS banner during coverage of London’s Gay Pride Parade.
