A daily newspaper has been cleared of wrongdoing after reporting that a political party official had called a transgender person a “mental f*****g pervy git.”

Glasgow-based daily The Herald reported that Marjory Smith, the women’s officer of a local SNP branch, had been reported to party HQ over “transphobic” remarks which had appeared on Facebook.

The story reported that Ms Smith had described a transgender person as a “mental f*****g pervy git”, claimed that transgender activists were “possessed by an evil dangerous cult” and compared a transgender woman’s looks to those of a named serial killer.

Ms Smith complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation that the story, published in October 2019, had breached Clause 1 (Accuracy), Clause 2 (Privacy), and Clause 3 (Harassment) of the Editors’ Code of Practice.

The story was initially published in print under the headline: “SNP trans row deepens as women’s officer reported over ‘hateful’ remarks.”

It also appeared online under the headlined: “SNP women’s officer who called trans woman “mental pervy git” and compared another to serial killer [name] reported to HQ”.

In the piece, The Herald also quoted from a Facebook message which Ms Smith had sent to a prospective councillor to try to gain her support for her stance on gender-related issues.

Ms Smith claimed that quoting from this message constituted an intrusion into her privacy, in breach of Clause 2, and that the story itself was misleading, in breach of Clause 1, because it had not included the context in which her comments had been made.

The complainant said that if this had been included, it would have been clear that she had been responding to what she called “outrageous intrusion into women’s spaces by predatory, aggressive men.”

She also said that the article breached Clause 3, as the reporter would have had to have “trawled” her public Facebook profile in order to find her comments about the transgender individuals, and that the article was a co-ordinated “attack” on her and those who shared her views.

The Herald denied there had been any breach of the Code, saying that Ms Smith accepted that her Facebook profile was open to the public and so its reporter was free to report the comments she had made about the transgender individuals.

The newspaper said that when Ms Smith had been contacted for comment about the FB messages, she did not raise any privacy concerns and instead gave a full response for publication defending her remarks.

IPSO ruled in favour of The Herald on all three Clauses, saying that omitting some of the background to her comments did not make the story inaccurate and that she had no reasonable expectation of privacy in respect of the comments contained in the messages.

The full ruling can be read here.