Quadrant‘s editor-in-chief, Keith Windschuttle, has apologised to the ABC’s managing director and promised to remove an article suggesting the Manchester bombing should have instead taken place at the national broadcaster’s Sydney headquarters.

However the article, which Mr Windschuttle said “represents a serious error of judgement and should not have been published”, remained online late on Wednesday.

In his letter, Mr Windschuttle said he had “instructed that the article and its comment should be withdrawn completely from our website”.

Michelle Guthrie demanded the apology, and that the article be removed, in a letter to Quadrant this morning.

The head of the ABC condemned what she said was a “vicious and offensive” online journal article.

Earlier, Communications Minister Mitch Fifield has joined a chorus of condemnation against conservative publication Quadrant after its online editor said it would have been preferable if the Manchester bomb had exploded in the ABC’s Q&A studios.

“Unlike those young girls in Manchester, their lives snuffed out before they could begin, none of the panel’s likely casualties would have represented the slightest reduction in humanity’s intelligence, decency, empathy or honesty,” Roger Franklin wrote of Monday night’s events.

Franklin labelled Q&A panellist Lawrence Krauss a “filthy liar” for his characterisation of the threat of Islam, and then imagined him being blown up by the terrorist bomb.

“Mind you, as Krauss felt his body being penetrated by the Prophet’s shrapnel of nuts, bolts and nails, those goitered eyes might in their last glimmering have caught a glimpse of vindication.”

ABC chief Michelle Guthrie says the comments were a vicious and offensive attack on the ABC, its staff and program guests.

“Like many others, I am appalled at your willingness to turn an act of terrorism in the United Kingdom into a means of making a political point against those you disagree with,” she said in a strongly-worded letter to the editor of Quadrant.

She called on the journal to remove Franklin’s article from its website and apologise.

Senator Fifield, appearing before an upper house hearing in Canberra on Wednesday, sided with Ms Guthrie.

“I think this constitutes a new low in Australian public debate,” he said.

“We can all disagree with what particular media outlets do and say —that is appropriate in a democracy but the comments by Quadrant are sick and unhinged.”

– with AAP/ABC