Labour has demanded an apology from the Daily Mail after the newspaper said using a picture of the grave of Ed Miliband's father was an "error of judgement".
A top executive conceded publishing the photo with the caption "grave socialist" on the Mail's website was a mistake but stressed it had been removed when Mr Miliband complained.
He refused to apologise for the article itself and insisted its headline "The Man Who Hated Britain" was justified when read in the context of the rest of the report.
Ralph Miliband in his Royal Navy uniform More than 50 people have now complained to the Press Complaints Commission about the coverage.
Ralph Miliband, a Jewish refugee who fled to Britain to escape the Nazis and served in the Royal Navy in World War II, was a top Marxist academic.
The original article, published on Saturday, questioned his influence on the Labour leader and prompted Mr Miliband to accuse the paper of a "character assassination".
He insisted on writing a rebuttal, which the paper published but alongside an abridged version of the earlier piece and a new editorial refusing to apologise.
The Mail failed to respond to repeated requests from Sky News to react to the furore on Tuesday but the newspaper's deputy editor Jon Steafel appeared later on BBC's Newsnight.
Mr Steafel battled to justify the newspaper's coverage as former Downing Street spin doctor Alastair Campbell declared it indefensible.
Ed Miliband reacting to the coverage on Tuesday Mr Campbell said the Mail was "the worst of British values posing as the best" and described its editor Paul Dacre as a "poison in our national life".
Mr Steafel, considered a potential successor to Mr Dacre, made clear the paper stood by its article and subsequent coverage.
He argued that the writings of Ralph Miliband, who died in 1994, showed he was "very antipathetic" to the views and values of many British people.
"His views on British institutions from our schools to our royal family to our military to our universities to the church to our great newspapers ... what he said was that he felt that all of those things were bad aspects, were unfortunate aspects of British life," he said.
"If you take those things together and you combine them with an espousing of a Marxist ideology, that in our view represented someone who hated British values."
Alastair Campbell called Mail editor Paul Dacre 'poison' He added: "He was a supporter of the Marxist ideology which was being used to run governments in other parts of the continent and other parts of Europe which was responsible for an awful lot of terrible things, including millions and millions of deaths."
Mr Miliband has said he does not share his father's Marxist ideology but Mr Steafel argued it was reasonable to highlight Ralph Miliband's views because of his influence on his son.
"Ed Miliband seeks to be prime minister of this country. He has made many speeches over the three years since he became Labour leader and in many of those speeches he refers to the story of his parents," he said.
"If you are to understand Ed Miliband, who has told us he wants to bring back socialism to modern Britain, then you need to understand the values that shaped him."
On Wednesday, the Mail showed no sign of backtracking - devoting another four pages to the row and including a shorter version of the editorial it published on Tuesday.
Labour appeared to focus on Mr Steafel's comments about the picture, calling for an apology for the "crude pun" used on the Mail Online.
However, a Labour spokesman also added: "We continue to believe that the article headlined 'The Man Who Hated Britain' and a subsequent article which described Ralph Miliband's legacy as 'evil' were smears.
"The deputy editor of the Daily Mail showed he could not justify either of them."
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