Brazil has one of the highest rates of femicide in Latin America. Nearly 1,500 women were killed in Brazil in 2024 because of their gender, the highest figure since femicide was defined in the country’s penal code in 2015.
Yet, journalists specializing in violence against women say that while the Brazilian press has made progress in covering these crimes, it still faces structural challenges in adequately addressing gender-based violence.
"I don't think the media is failing to present the scale of the problem through numbers. I believe the media has failed to show the complexity surrounding this type of crime, before and after the murder," journalist Marisa Sanematsu, content director at the Patrícia Galvão Institute, told LatAm Journalism Review (LJR).
The Patrícia Galvão Institute is dedicated to defending women's rights through media coverage. Between 2015 and 2016, it monitored coverage of femicides and identified a number of problems. According to Sanematsu, although the murders received significant coverage, the term "femicide" was rarely used. Most reports focused on the police’s viewpoint, and the only sources were police reports and public security agents.
"Even focusing on individual cases, the coverage was superficial, lacking in investigative work, and, moreover, stereotypical and biased, often justifying the perpetrator and blaming the victim," Sanematsu said. "The stories were limited to the crime itself, and there was no indication of ways out of the violent situation, such as support services and reporting channels."
Since then, Sanematsu says there has been a clear improvement in coverage, especially by the so-called mainstream media, but there are still several examples of articles that misinform and make a spectacle out of femicide.
"While today we have more journalists and media outlets concerned with addressing the issue seriously and bringing relevant information to the public, on the other hand, a large portion of the press still covers violence against women and femicide as specific and individual issues, without addressing the problem of gender-based violence in a broader way, which requires government intervention at all levels," Sanematsu said.
Cristina Fibe, a journalist specializing on violence against women, said the main challenge when covering femicide cases is finding the balance between the need to report the violence and the care taken not to exploit the suffering of the victim and her family.
With nearly two decades of experience, Fibe is currently a columnist for UOL. While working at O Globo in 2018, she worked on the João Teixeira de Faria case and went in depth on violence against women for the book “João de Deus - O abuso da fé" (John of God - The abuse of faith). At the time, the then-renowned “spiritual healer” was accused of sexual abuse by several women, which triggered hundreds of complaints against him. João de Deus was convicted in 15 cases of sexual assault through fraud and rape against 66 victims. The combined sentences amount to 458 years, 11 months, and 5 days of imprisonment.
According to Fibe, it's important that crimes against women are no longer silenced so there can be pressure for prevention, education and public policies. However, she notes that many media outlets still publish stories on the topic because they're more concerned with the potential audience.
"They exploit images of women's suffering to exhaustion, use the passive voice and fail to shed light on the killers. We find ourselves 'justifying' the unjustifiable, looking for reasons for a man to take a woman's life—separation, betrayal, whatever," Fibe told LJR. "And it's nothing like that: a man doesn't kill out of jealousy or love. He kills because he believes he owns that body. He doesn't see women as human beings with equal rights, but rather as objects under his possession. It's a crime of hate, not love. We lack literacy in journalism to make fewer mistakes."
Raíssa França, journalist and founder of Eufêmea, the first women's content agency in Alagoas, in Northeastern Brazil, highlights an additional problem in covering femicides when the victim is a Black woman. She said many media outlets still resort to sensationalism or simply ignore the case when a Black woman is killed.
"I believe that a Black woman's life is still seen as a number, a statistic, and not as a person. In my understanding, the life of a Black woman seems to be worth less, have less impact, and even the way she is narrated continues to be a serious problem," França told LJR. "We don't see this when it comes to a white, middle-class woman, for example. The main challenge is to break this logic of invisibility and sensationalism. It's ensuring that the coverage is ethical, committed, and that it covers justice. It's not forgetting that that woman is a person, not a statistic."
Fibe says the João de Deus case made her realize that covering gender violence is different from all other investigations: a different way of conducting interviews, different priorities when writing the text, and different concerns with headline and photo.
"It was the need to conduct accurate research and defend the publication within the newspaper O Globo that drove me to study best practices and specialize in covering violence against women," she said. "I went to study because in almost 20 years of my career, I hadn't gotten any education in this regard."
The journalist said that improving coverage requires structural changes in newsrooms, with more women in leadership positions.
A study published in March by the Reuters Institute showed that there are still more women working as journalists than employed as senior editors in nine of the twelve countries analyzed. Brazil had the largest gap between the percentage of women journalists and women editors.
"We need to structurally change newsrooms. It's difficult because newsrooms reflect the patriarchal system in which they operate. Change won't be quick, but it does involve journalism," Fibe said.
Fibe also advocates for more serious treatment of sexual harassment cases within media companies themselves and zero tolerance for the silencing of women journalists. She also highlighted the importance of literacy within newsrooms to avoid mistakes.
"It's important to treat victims humanely—consider whether the use of a particular photo or text could hurt them or offend their family, for example. The problem is that sexism is so ingrained in us that we often don't realize the mistakes we make," she said. "We need to focus on the men who commit these crimes, investigate them instead of digging into the victims' past. Always remember: it's not the victim's fault. And stop looking for 'reasons' for their death."
França emphasizes the need for gender and race literacy in newsrooms, and also believes in the importance of preserving the memory of victims.
"You can't talk about gender without talking about race," she said. "News coverage can be a tool for justice or erasure; it can embrace or revictimize; it can raise awareness or fuel the cycle of violence. It's also important to remember that femicide isn't a 'crime of passion,' it isn't a 'family tragedy,' it isn't a 'couple's quarrel.' It's a gender-motivated crime, rooted in structural machismo."
Beyond the internal issues in newsrooms and the structural machismo of society, Sanematsu believes the press fails when it doesn’t investigate the context that led to femicide.
Among the questions that should be asked when a woman is murdered by an ex-partner, she lists some: had the victim previously suffered violence? Did she file a complaint or did someone report it to the police? Did she receive a protective order? Was the aggressor notified of these measures? Did the victim receive psychosocial support? Did the police visit her to check on her safety?
About 41% of Brazilian women 16 and older reported being the victim of physical, sexual and/or psychological violence from a current or former partner, according to a 2025 survey from the Brazilian Public Security Forum.
"Considering that femicide is the culmination of a cycle of violence that could, and should, have been interrupted, it is always a preventable death. But the press doesn't ask the question: how could this femicide have been prevented?" Sanematsu said. "If these are preventable deaths, we need to ask where the State went wrong."
