A political activist whose “abusive” Twitter posts were published by a weekly newspaper has lost her privacy complaint over the issue.

The Independent Press Standards Organisation has thrown out a complaint by Vale Yates after the Retford, Gainsborough & Worksop Times covered her suspension as vice chairwoman of the Bassetlaw Labour Party.

The Times reported it had seen screenshots of Ms Yates’s social media posts in which she was critical of nearby towns including Worksop, saying “an earthquake would improve it,” and another complaining about a “family of screaming kids” moving in next door.

Ms Yates claimed her Twitter account was set to private, but IPSO determined she had only taken this action after the tweets reported by the Times had been posted.

Complaining under Clause 1 (Accuracy) and Clause 2 (Privacy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice, Ms Yates also said she was a private citizen and therefore no story should have been published about her as it was not in the public interest.

She also disputed several points of accuracy.

Denying any breach of Code, the Times said an anonymous source had provided screenshots of the tweets, as well as evidence that the social media profile was open to view by the public at the time the screenshots were taken, which it supplied to IPSO.

The suspension of Ms Yates had also been confirmed to the Times by a Labour Party press officer.

IPSO ruled that the published tweets were in the public domain and did not find any aspect of the story significantly misleading.

The complaint was not upheld, and the full adjudication can be read here.