A daily newspaper has been cleared of inaccuracy by the watchdog following a row involving two Scottish National Party politicians.

Pro-independence daily The National published a first-person piece by Joanna Cherry, left, after she lost her front bench role in the SNP in February 2021.

In the course of the article, she claimed that another SNP MP, Kirsty Blackman, had “made it clear from their social media attacks” that Ms Cherry had been sacked for “transphobia.”

Dr Jonathan Kiehlmann, acting on behalf of Ms Blackman, complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation under Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors’ Code, saying Ms Blackman had never made such a claim on social media.

The complainant acknowledged that Ms Blackman had previously been critical of Ms Cherry’s behaviour towards trans people, and that, after Ms Cherry’s removal from the front-bench, Ms Blackman had supported calls for action against Ms Cherry for her alleged transphobia.

However, in relation to the specific claim made in the article, he said that at no stage had Ms Blackman claimed on social media that Ms Cherry was sacked for transphobia, nor had she commented on the reasons for her removal from the front bench.

The National did not accept a breach of Clause 1, arguing that the article had not claimed that Ms Blackman had said Ms Cherry’s dismissal was due to transphobia, but that Ms Cherry had been making a point around the “wider political climate” behind her removal from the front-bench.

The Newsquest-owned title said that Ms Cherry’s comment – “Others, including Kirsty Blackman made it clear from their social media attacks on me that I was being sacked for “transphobia””- fell short of being a factual assertion about the precise content of such posts.

Rather, it concluded, the writer was expressing her view as to what the posts represented.

The piece had, therefore, sufficiently distinguished the passage as the writer’s interpretation of Ms Blackman’s social media posts in compliance with Clause 1 (iv), and for this reason, there was no breach of Clause 1.

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