The daughter of the editor of the Guardian, BellaM — Isabella Mackie — has been identified as the poster of a controversial comment on a website she was moderating.
According to the website, CiF Watch — set up specifically to monitor incidents of anti-Israel bias on the Guardian's Comment is Free site — BellaM intervened in a series of posts that followed an article by the Muslim writer Ed Husain, attacking the columnist Melanie Phillips.
BellaM is employed as a staff moderator on Comment is Free. Her job includes deleting comments which are offensive or libellous. But in the course of moderating the comments on the Husain article, she decided to make her own contribution.
She wrote of Ms Phillips: "I imagine she's like that character in Little Britain who is violently sick every time she hears the words 'black' or 'gay.' Except for Melanie, the word would be 'Muslim.'
