When is offensive not offensive?

Fourteen council staff suspended for circulating 'anti-Semitic' joke on email reads a self-explanatory Mail headline. Later in the article it states: sources say the jokes were racist...some of the emails are believed to have contained anti-Semitic comments.

So when the Mail writes this: The 'offensive' jokes are believed to have been sent in flurry of exchanges between staff, including social workers, why does it feel the need to write 'offensive' in quote marks?

Is it because it wants to suggest this is another 'PC gone mad' story? Or is it that racist and anti-Semitic jokes just aren't plain offensive to the Mail?