The boss of the ABC, Michelle Guthrie, has demanded an immediate apology from the online editor of the right-wing publication Quadrant after an overnight article suggested the Manchester bombing should have happened in the studios of the ABC’s Q&A program.

The online editor of Quadrant, Roger Franklin, wrote in a blog post yesterday that “had there been a shred of justice’’ the Manchester bomber would have blown up Monday’s night’s Q&A panel.

Franklin inferred anyone to do with the left-leaning ABC program was bludging off the Australian taxpayer and “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.’’

You can read Franklin’s full column here.

However, this morning Guthrie described Franklin’s article as “vicious and offensive”.

In a media statement, Guthrie said: “Quadrant promotes itself as ‘the leading general intellectual journal of ideas’. Those words ring hollow in the wake of last night’s vicious and offensive attack on the ABC, its staff and its program guests.

“To take issue with our programming and our content is one thing. But to express the wish that, if there were any justice, the horrific terrorist bombing in Manchester would have taken place in the ABC’s Ultimo studio and killed those assembled there is a new low in Australian public debate.”