Now 14 is often defined as politically biased towards the israeli right-wing and far-right politics[2][3][4][5][6] and is often favourable towards Benjamin Netanyahu.[7][2] Knesset members from the Likud recommended watching Channel 14 because "it is a right-wing channel that appeals to a right-wing audience".[8]
Controversy inside Israel
The channel caused much controversy in Israel over the years. In the first years of its existence, the channel excluded reformist and conservative jewish religious movements from the channel's broadcasts.[9] The channel was sued for a sum of several hundred thousand shekels for breaking the Israeli law: Prohibition of Discrimination in Products, Services and Entry into Places of Entertainment and Public Places Law, 2000.[10]
On November 11, 2018, the channel aired an interview with Yitzhak Gabbai, who was convicted of setting fire to a bilingual school in Jerusalem and served three years in prison. The interview received condemnations from the many figuries in the Israeli public, and as a result the channel itself and the interviewer Boaz Golan apologized for the incident.[11] Following the interview, the Second Authority for Television and Radio started a violation procedure against the channel.[12]
On May 2021, Following a rocket attack in northern Israel, the reporter Kobi Finkler said on live: "One (missile) fell on a soccer field in a large Arab settlement and very unfortunately it did not result in mass casualties there". In response, he was fired by the channel.[13]
On May 30, 2022, the printed magazine of "Now 14" published an article entitled "LGBTistan: This is how the revolution is organized that exploits the LGBT and eats its children", by Gali Bat Horin. On March 28, 2023, the magazine "Now 14" published an article entitled "This is how young people in Israel are led to castration and surgeries following the transgender ideology".[14][15]
On February 21, 2023, during the 2023 Israeli judicial reform protests, channel commentator Ari Shamai said on the program "The Patriots" that "these people (protestors) (...) are the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the Belial (Devil of the Hebrew Bible), who refused to fight against the Nazis in Warsaw Ghetto." On the following days, he was suspended from participating in the program.[16] Later on, Uri Shamai called for the release of the Jewish terrorist Yigal Amir who led to the Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.[17] On the following days, Israeli protest movements arose calling to stop advertising on the channel.[18]
Controversy outside Israel
During the Israel-Hamas war, the channel published a number of articles that turned out to be incorrect.[19]
On 2024, Some of the channel members suggested that Israel should disregard claims that it is contravening international law, especially in the field of military conduct in wartime, and should stop letting the United States push it around on issues on which the two states disagree.[4]
The Logically Facts fact-checking site reported in 2024 that
According to The Times of Israel, the "incendiary right-wing" news broadcaster Channel 14 was a "largely dismissed bit player in the media industry" until its viewership grew exponentially in 2023, which sparked concern due to its "repeated scandals" and charges of "pro-Netanyahu propaganda." The channel has been described as "the Israeli answer to Fox News" by Ayala Panievsky, a research fellow at Cambridge University and City University of London specializing in right-wing populism, who, in a 2023 opinion piece in the Israeli news outlet Haaretz, wrote that Channel 14 is "propagandistic."[20]