It’s not the kind of diversity Australia needs, but coverage of today’s Senate inquiry report proves that diversity of a kind exists: Between the Murdoch press and others in the country.

What The Guardian saw – and headlined – as identifying a “dangerous monopoly”, with “Labor and Greens support” for a judicial inquiry into media diversity and News Corp, became quite something else in News’ metro and national dailies.

While acknowledging that the report had been supported not only by the Greens – whose senator Sarah Hanson-Young chaired the inquiry – but by six Labor senators on the committee, News’ The Australian quoted Labor communications spokeswoman Michelle Rowland – who has been accused by former Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd as being too “close” to Murdoch – that a judicial inquiry was not party policy. It is also opposed by the Coalition, from which Liberal senator Andrew Bragg published a dissenting report calling the main report a “shameless political stunt which should not be taken seriously”.

Bragg had been behind a call for an inquiry into the complaints process of national broadcaster the ABC, which had been voted down by Labor and the Greens in the Senate. He said that recommending that private media organisations “should be subjected to the intrusions of a judicial inquiry” while not subjecting the ABC to Senate scrutiny was “absurd”.

News metro tabloids including the Courier-Mail carried a News Corp Australia Network report by technology editor Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson focusing on the time taken by the inquiry and delays in publishing its report and featuring Sky News video coverage of News Corp’s global chief executive Robert Thomson’s video evidence to the inquiry in October prominently.

Both are behind paywalls, and a contrast to the free-access coverage in the Guardian, which accompanies its report with an upbeat, positive-looking picture of Hanson-Young in contrast to the downbeat one in News’ mastheads.

The majority report of the Senate environment and communications references committee called for the establishment of a judicial inquiry with “the powers and weight of a royal commission” into media diversity, ownership and regulation, finding that the current regulatory framework “is not fit for purpose and significant changes are required”.

It argued that a judicial inquiry would have the capacity for a more comprehensive investigation, including compelling witnesses to give evidence, than could be undertaken by a parliamentary committee. “Such an inquiry would also be conducted at arm’s length of all politicians to allow an independent investigation into media regulation and ownership.”

The report also points to shortcomings of existing systems of regulation, in which print and digital news are overseen by the industry-funded self-regulator, the Australian Press Council, while TV is overseen by government agency the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

Media regulation was not effective and inconsistent governance arrangements and standards across platforms made it unworkable, today’s majority report said.

“Evidence to the committee testified to the inability of existing regulators to ensure that standards of fairness and accuracy are maintained, and to prevent the spread of misinformation,” it said.

The Senate inquiry followed a parliamentary petition by Rudd calling for a royal commission, signed electronically by more than 500,000 people, a call Hanson-Young said was warranted.

In her report, Hanson-Young says “evidence that the Murdoch media empire is indeed a dangerous monopoly was heard loud and clear.

“From climate-denialism to gendered, partisan attacks, and providing a platform for racism and for COVID disinformation, the impact of both concentration of media ownership and a failing regulatory system was obvious.”

Australian journalists who “produce high-quality, in-depth reporting with integrity and professionalism” were being let down by “a broken regulatory system and corporate culture inside news organisations that allows poor behaviour to flourish”.

Hanson-Young says establishment of a judicial inquiry “is a move the parliament itself can make”, but while such an inquiry could be set up without the support of the government, it would take at least a member of the government to cross the floor for a bill to pass the House of Representatives.

Comments since the report have been the predictable ones: Rudd, who now chairs a lobby group called Australians for a Murdoch Royal Commission, said the report vindicated the concerns of petitioners, claiming the report would not have happened had it not been for “ordinary Australians doing what politicians haven’t had the courage for until now – organising together to stand up to Murdoch’s media empire”.

News mastheads also carry a comment from local executive chairman Michael Miller saying that the report’s calls for “yet another expensive media inquiry and even more regulation” are not justified.

It’s a view supported unsurprisingly by federal communications minister Paul Fletcher, who said Australia was “fortunate in having a vibrant, diverse media sector” and echoed News’ own calls in saying the report’s recommendations “did not address the practical problems confronting media in Australia today”, a reference to its commercial battle against the tech giants that dominate today’s advertising market, an issue being separately addressed by the government.

Rowland’s comment that the Senate operates “as it sees fit” is not without foundation, but it was never likely that legislation criticising Australia’s dominant print publisher would get much support from the major parties – or traction in the lower house – given the influence that publisher can have on their electoral success. Which of course, is where we came in.

Senator Sarah Hanson-Young has done what the upper house supported her in doing – looking into the structural shortcomings of Australia’s media industry – and it will be up to the Senate when it resumes, to do something about it.

Peter Coleman