THE independent press watchdog has rejected a complaint from former First Minister Alex Salmond about The Herald’s reporting of his debut show on a Kremlin-funded TV channel.

Mr Salmond had complained about The Herald’s coverage of discrepancies among a series of tweets shown on the Alex Salmond Show on RT on November 16.

Described as coming from an “avalanche” of contacts from the public, these included a tweet from an account which had never tweeted, and a tweet from the show’s series director.

Mr Salmond complained an article headlined “Salmond sparks ‘fake news’ row with new TV show" published online breached the Editor’s Code of Practice with regard to accuracy.

However the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) agreed there had been discrepancies in the comments broadcast on RT and The Herald “had a reasonable basis for characterising the response to this as a ‘fake news’ row.”

IPSO said there was no breach of the accuracy clause of the Code, and hence no need to publish a correction.

IPSO also rejected a parallel complaint from former SNP MP Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, who is Mr Salmond’s business partner and co-presenter on the RT show, after a report on November 18 about her position on the SNP’s ruling national executive committee (NEC).

The story reported a disability rights campaigner urging the SNP to remove her from the NEC on the grounds her role as equalities convener was “not compatible” with having a business relationship with RT, given Russia’s record on gay rights.

Ms Ahmed-Sheikh complained The Herald had inaccurately reported that she had declined to respond to a request for comment about the criticism.

However IPSO ruled that, while Ms Ahmed-Sheikh, had replied to The Herald, she had attacked the paper, rather than addressing the criticism about her.

The IPSO judgment said: “The comment provided by the complainant did not engage with this criticism; but criticised the newspaper instead. The newspaper’s interpretation of Ms Ahmed-Sheikh’s response to its enquiries was not unreasonable.”

The broadcasting regulator Ofcom is currently investigating the Alex Salmond Show over the accuracy of the tweets on the November 16 show.