Karl Stefanovic has delivered a scathing rant against online news site The Daily Mail after it published photos of him and a female colleague alongside a headline with “sleazy” insinuations.

On Friday the Today host slammed the website for “specialising in shaming women”.

“It has a despicable track record for denigrating women for who they are, what they look like, the choices they make, for denigrating women full stop,” Stefanovic said.

While the 42-year-old acknowledged he and his Today colleagues were fair game for “click bait” given their public profiles, he said he could not abide lies about non-famous friends and colleagues.

Stefanovic referred in particular to an article published on the Daily Mail on Thursday with the headline: “Karl Stefanovic checks into humble caravan park with a Channel Nine colleague and 12 cans of pre-mixed rum, but girlfriend is nowhere to be seen.”

“The inference – I’m a drunk,” Stefanovic said. “The real hurt here though is for my colleague – a young, female colleague … the sleazy suggestion we’re checking in somewhere and I’m, quote, ‘settling in for a long night’.”

The veteran host said his young colleague had spent hours in tears because of the “hurtful and false way she has been portrayed by this website”.

“Fact: this was work,” he said. “We were filming a story about our struggling prawn farmers – they deserve a rum or two.

“The producer pictured on the website is a committed, talented, hard-working and totally professional young woman, and not deserving of this cheap, lazy, sexist online slur.”

Stefanovic likened the article to previous examples of women being shamed for their appearance or behaviour, including the now-infamous Samantha Armytage “granny panties” article and an attack on his co-host Lisa Wilkinson for wearing the same blouse twice.

Stefanovic ended with a call to action, encouraging Australians to “never” go to the website if they agreed with his take.

“I’m over it,” he said. “I don’t know what you think, but I hope Australia is over it as well.”

The Daily Mail responded by running an article describing Stefanovic’s speech as a “bizarre tirade”.

"Do not slur the reputations of others in your eagerness to throw mud at me." –@KarlStefanovic #9Today pic.twitter.com/v0G7xSBlmu

— The Today Show (@TheTodayShow) June 1, 2017