Photo: CIF Watch.

The U.K. media continues to churn out stories about the brutal murder of Mohamed Abu Khdeir, the Palestinian teen whose burned body was found near Jerusalem last week, with most reports focused on the police investigation, and, most recently, new videos of the abduction (from CCTV), which show the faces of the likely perpetrators.

However, though the coverage to date has been decidedly one-sided – in focusing almost entirely on the possibility that the Palestinian was murdered by a Jew in a revenge killing in response to the murder of three Israeli teens – almost all reports have qualified their claims by noting that this theory hasn’t yet been proven.

Typical is the following passage by the Guardian’s Peter Beaumont’s in a July 6th report:

The Palestinian teenager was kidnapped and murdered on Wednesday in what many suspect was a revenge killing by Israeli extremists in response to the murder of three Israeli teenagers.

Similarly, Guardian headlines have been relatively restrained.  When the word ‘revenge‘ has been used, it’s surrounded by “quotes” indicating that this is still only an allegation.

However, The Times (of London) displayed no such restraint in a story written by Josh Mitnick and published in the print edition of the paper on July 3rd.

Here’s a photo of the article:

Photo: CIF Watch.

Whilst it may very well be that the Palestinian was indeed killed in a revenge attack by Jews (or even ‘settlers’), the headline takes an unsubstantiated claim, blaming Israeli ‘settlers’, and sells it as a proven fact.

Though the subsequent online edition (titled ‘Appeal for calm after Palestinian boy murdered in ‘revenge’ killing, pay wall) softened the charge a bit, the damage – per the nearly 400,000 Times print edition readers – has already been done.

Adam Levick is the managing editor of CiF Watch, an affiliate of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA).