PCC to investigate journalist's blog

A blogpost by the columnist Melanie Phillips referring to the "moral depravity" of Arab "savages" is being "looked into" by the Press Complaints Commission.

The comment piece, which ran on The Spectator website last week entitled "Armchair Barbarism", lambasted media coverage of the murder of five members of a Jewish family in the West Bank by Palestinian militants this month. "The moral depravity of the Arabs is finding a grotesque echo in the moral bankruptcy and worse of the British and American 'liberal' media," Phillips wrote.

Engage, a group promoting Muslim engagement in UK society, said they have also reported the incident to the police. Fraser Nelson, editor of The Spectator, said: "We are quite clear that Melanie Phillips hasn't broken the PCC code."