How can they not tell the difference between... “the gentleman”... and a “murderous, subhuman, blood-sopped, troglodyte-from hell”... is beyond me.
You are right, I think it is the political correctness that caused several reporters referred to him as “the gentleman,” because they are over-compensating.
In the pictures, of what we can see, he is not bad looking, and he has that long scarf across his nose and mouth. At Halloween time, he could be imitated, as a kind of masked anti-hero. I fear that the impressionable will turn his image into a poster boy, like they have done for Che Guevara, who got off killing his enemies in firing squads, but whose image is ubiquitous as rebel chic.