“The evidence that the Murdoch media empire is indeed a dangerous monopoly was heard loud and clear,” she said. “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.”

News Corp Australasia executive chairman Michael Miller said the report’s calls for another expensive media inquiry and more regulation lacked justification. “Neither are warranted.”

Nine Entertainment Co,also a dominant player in Australian media,declined to comment.

Senator Bragg said the committee’s recommendation was targeted at Murdoch’s News Corp,which dominates the country’s newspaper market,adding that it was “deeply embarrassing and totally inappropriate” to assess media concentration through newspaper owners in the digital age.

“Moreover,conferring the powers of a royal commission on an inquiry which will have oversight of
media operators endangers democracy,” Senator Bragg said in the report.

Labor senator Kim Carr,a member of the committee,said the proposed judicial inquiry would cover the whole media framework,not just newspapers.

“Rather than the ad-hoc,piecemeal approach the government is taking by trying to regulate the digital platforms,there needs to be a proper examination of the total regulatory environment,” he said. “It needs to be distanced from politicians and that is why a judicial inquiry is appropriate,with the power to compel witnesses. A parliamentary inquiry itself is not adequate to deal with this.”

But opposition communications spokeswoman Michelle Rowland said a judicial inquiry into media was not party policy and ruled out Labor launching a royal commission into the issue if it won government at next year’s election.

News Corp is the country’s biggest newspaper owner,with titles including national broadsheetThe Australian and Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph,Melbourne’sHerald Sun,Brisbane’sTheCourier Mail and Adelaide’sTheAdvertiser.It also owns Australia’s second-biggest news website news.com.au and Sky News.

While executives from multiple media outlets,including Nine Entertainment Co,owner of this masthead,were called to give evidence on the broader question of whether Australia’s media was too concentrated,the inquiry’s five public hearings focused heavily on News Corp. Four senior News Corp executives,including global chief executive Robert Thomson,who gave evidence from New York,defended the company across multiple hearings.

At a hearing in February,Mr Miller accused Mr Rudd of misleading the inquiry and said it was “simply a fact that we are now living in the most diverse news media marketplace in Australian history”.

It is the second split in the committee in recent weeks,after Senator Hanson-Young led a successful push toderail a separate inquiry Senator Bragg had instigated into the ABC’s complaints handling processes,which she called a partisan “witch hunt”. The inquiry was abandoned last month after the Senate voted to suspend it until a separate investigation commissioned by the ABC delivers its findings,in line with a plea from ABC chair Ita Buttrose.

“To argue that the Senate cannot inquire into ABC News,but that a royal commission is somehow required for News Corporation,is an absurdity so extraordinary that it defiles the dignity of Senate
processes,” Senator Bragg said in the report. “It is a flagrant abuse of one of the strongest and most productive tools of our democracy for nakedly political ends.”

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