“Cowardly attack”. Minister of Education demands investigation into RTP after controversy over poor students

The minister demands that the public television station open an investigation to determine the reason behind choosing the specific part of his statements about poor students in university residences.

After the controversy generated by his statements about university residences, the Minister of Education, Fernando Alexandre, returned to the topic to harshly criticize RTP.

In an interview with , the head of the Education portfolio suggested that the public station should “investigate” the journalist’s editorial decision who highlighted excerpts from his speech.

“I find it unbelievable that the RTP management does not explain this“, stated the minister, maintaining that the choice of the excerpts released was not “by chance”. For Fernando Alexandre, the public station must find out “why the journalist chose that excerpt” because “those who were in the session did not have the idea that RTP passed”. “I gave a long speech and contextualized what I was saying”, guarantees the minister.

In the same interview, the minister rejects the idea that he should learn lessons about his public communication, classifying the episode as “a cowardly attack” and “vile”. Fernando Alexandre further argues that the case demonstrates the need to maintain “critical thinking” also in relation to the media, regretting that, in this case, public television has acted “at the level of social networks, at its worst”.

The controversy arose last week, during the presentation of the new model of social action for Higher Education. In his speech, the minister stated that university residences should welcome students from different social strata and that, currently, they are occupied mainly by “students from the most disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds”, adding that “this is why they are deteriorating”. The statements raised strong criticism from the opposition and even led to calls for his resignation.

Fernando Alexandre also stated, at the time, that “when we put people who are basically all on lower incomes to benefit from a public service, we know that this public service deteriorates”, phrases that were widely publicized and interpreted as directly blaming low-income students for the degradation of residences.

The minister later denied this reading, classifying it as “totally false”. As he explained, his position is that “the quality of public services and their management is benefited from the social diversity of its users“. For Fernando Alexandre, the cause of the degradation lies in the management and not in the students, arguing that services used only by low-income people tend to be neglected because they “have no voice” and are stigmatized.