Cristina Ferreira
Controversy leads ERC to demand up to R$150,000 fine for “transferring responsibility to the victim” and showing femicide during morning broadcast.
The Regulatory Entity for Social Communication (ERC) decided to move forward with a administrative offense process against TVI due to certain content broadcast on the Dois à 10 program, in June 2025, following the controversy generated by statements by presenter Cristina Ferreira about a femicide case.
At issue are, on the one hand, the presenter’s comments considered by the ERC as a “transfer of responsibility to the victim”; on the other, the display of violent images during protected hours.
The ERC’s deliberation may result in a fine between 20 thousand and 150 thousand euros to channel four.
The decision comes after related to the broadcast that day, during the Criminal Chronicle section, in which Cristina Ferreira commented on a case of feminicide.
“We really have to warn people that nowadays it is very complicated, even relationships that may have been about love or whatever, when they enter this phase of persecution, of some control, the police need to be warned, family members should be warned and not… Because I I don’t know if this woman, after the dance, got into a car with him and then, perhaps, she got along well enough for that to happen.”, said the presenter in the program’s segment.
The phrase triggered strong public opposition and became the center of an authentic media controversy.
@bilbiamtengarsadinha “When he got in the car, he got ready…” 🙄🙄 #cristinaferreira #portugal #tugavideos #fyportugal #portugues #comediaportugal #portugalcomedia #tugaviral #fyportugal #portugaltiktok #portugal #tugavideos #fyportugal #portugues #comediaportugal ♬ original sound – Bilbiamtengarsada
Quoted by , the ERC considers that these words “transfer responsibility for what happened to the victim(s)”, by suggesting that the woman’s decision to accompany the suspect would have been decisive for the fatal outcome. At the same time, the regulator understands, the aggressor ends up being held harmless, since death becomes implicitly associated with the victim’s behavior, and not with the violent act carried out by the perpetrator.
The ERC’s analysis frames these statements in a particularly sensitive light as it is a hate crime against women. But the regulator’s assessment was not limited to this comment.
The ERC also evaluated the exhibition, in the same program, of a video showing a woman being stabbed. The images were broadcast in the morning, a time when children and teenagers may well be watching television.
Although Cristina Ferreira had previously alerted the public to the fact that they were “sensitive images”, and despite the shocked reactions of commentators in the studio, the entity concluded that the violence in the content was “unequivocal” and incompatible with the legal limits applicable to television broadcasting outside the range between 10:30 pm and 6 am.
TVI and Cristina defend themselves
Both TVI and Cristina Ferreira immediately rejected the accusations. According to the resolution, the channel’s programming director said that ‘”the overwhelming majority of complaints make a mistaken and decontextualized assessment of the presenter’s words and what she wanted to say with the expression used, giving it an abusive and prejudiced meaning that was never present, nor underlying, in the actual speech delivered”.
Cristina Ferreira defended that the comments made live were “duly contextualized, justified from individual perspectives by the concrete contours of the story, are absolutely complementary and fully respect legal limits, and it is absolutely false and even vexatious that the interpretation expressed in the participations can be removed from them”.
