Pride in London chair mocks CNN for confusing sex toys for ISIS flag

The Chair of Pride in London has reacted to a report from CNN wrongly claiming the ISIS flag was flown at the event – when it in fact featured sex toys.

The American news network carried a six-minute report on Saturday claiming that an ISIS flag was flown at London’s Pride celebrations.

The show’s anchor alleged that “the ISIS flag amongst a sea of rainbow colours was spotted by a CNN international assignment editor” – with the correspondent in a phone interview admitting she was “surprised” to be the only one who had spotted it.

Fortunately for the organisers of Pride in London, but unfortunately for CNN’s Lucy Pawle, the flag shown to shocked viewers across the world was in fact a celebration of anal sex toys.

Michael Salter, the Chair of Pride in London, appeared on the BBC Daily Politics show to joke about the incident.

He said: “Like many people, I thought it was very funny. But it made a serious point, which is that ISIS as an organisation is known for people they think might be gay off buildings and killing them.

“It was actually a very serious point about the tolerance we see in other countries around the world.”

He added that they had no idea which group carried the flag, saying: “It was quite odd on the day when we got reports of this, we started looking around trying to find it – but we couldn’t actually find the flag in the end.

“It’s CNN’s very bizarre exclusive. Any publicity is good publicity!”

“Social media picked it up very quickly and corrected CNN… hopefully Lucy the correspondent will come to Pride next year, and we’ll look after her and show her what Pride’s really about!”

Watch the interview below:

• Nov 29 2023

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