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Maria Elisa

Portuguese journalist

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ6761173 ↗
Source-derived summary

Maria Elisa Rogado Contente Domingues Hartman, known as Maria Elisa (born 4 June 1950) is a Portuguese journalist and television presenter.

Early years

Maria Elisa was born in Lisbon, Portugal. After attending the Medical School of the University of Lisbon for two years and the Drama School for another two (1967–1972), she trained as a professional journalist at the Centre de Formation des Journalistes, in Paris (1974–1977).

Career

As a journalist with RTP, the Portuguese Public Television, she was the author and hostess of her own political and cultural talk shows since 1977. She received and interviewed most of the Presidents, Prime Ministers and other politicians, writers, painters and many other relevant cultural Portuguese personalities as well as business men and union leaders, among many others. She was the hostess of The Greatest Portuguese, a BBC format (October 2006 to March 2007).

In her life Maria Elisa Domingues had other professional experiences: she was the Press Counselor to Prime Minister Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo (1979/1980); Program Director of RTP (1980–1983 and 1998–1999); Press Counselor with the Portuguese Embassy in Madrid (1986–1987); Director of Communication of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (1995–1998) and Cultural Counselor with the Portuguese Embassy in London (2004–2006).

Maria Elisa nowadays is the President of Associação dos Jornalistas Europeus (the Portuguese association of European Journalists) and also a regular contributor to some of Portugal's largest newspapers and news magazines, such as Diário de Notícias, Público, Expresso and Visão.

Honours and decorations

She received the Ordem do Mérito from President Mário Soares in 1987.

Personal life

In January 2001, Maria Elisa was diagnosed with fibromyalgia.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Maria Elisa” as portuguese journalist. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Maria, Elisa and Portuguese.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1950, 1967, 1972, 1974—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1950-06-04. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Maria, Elisa and Portuguese providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Maria Elisa”, the useful work is to connect “portuguese journalist” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6761173. VIAF identifies the subject as 100014691. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1950, 1967, 1972 and 1974.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Maria Elisa”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Maria Elisa primary sources, Maria Elisa archive and Maria research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Maria Elisa”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Maria Elisa” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.