Reeta was born in London to an Indian Bengali family and was raised in Birmingham.
In her teenage years, she spent time in India as a student at the Calcutta International School in Kolkata.
In 1988, she graduated from Exeter College, Oxford, with a degree in English and French. She also spent a year in France whilst a student.
Reeta joined the BBC as a producer and worked on various news programmes for BBC Radio 4: Today; The World at One; PM.
In 1992, she began working on BBC Radio 1’s Newsbeat and also wrote and presented news bulletins for Steve Wright in the Afternoon and News 92.
In 1994, she joined the newly launched BBC Radio 5 Live as a reporter for its breakfast programme. Among the major events/stories Reeta covered were the French presidential election and the Dunblane massacre (13th March 1996).
During this period, she became a general news correspondent, working on television as well as radio.
In 1997, she was appointed BBC community affairs correspondent. She covered the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry and also worked on home affairs stories, including the Damilola Taylor murder trial.
In 1999, she became a political correspondent, working across a range of BBC Television and Radio programmes, spanning BBC One, BBC Two, the BBC News channel, BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 5 Live.
In November 2010, she was appointed education correspondent.
On Saturday 17th May 2014, Reeta presented her first BBC One news programme and since then has presented the BBC News at One, BBC News at Six, BBC News at Ten and the weekend bulletins.
From October 2016, she also presented on the BBC News channel.
Among the major news stories she’s reported on for BBC News:
- 2017 and 2018: reported three times on the Rohingya crisis from Bangladesh and Myanmar;
- 2017: presented coverage of the 70th anniversary of the partition of India and Pakistan;
- 2020: US Presidential election;
- March 2022: based in Lviv in western Ukraine and presented news programmes, 10 days after the 2022 Russian invasion of the country.
On 5th February 2023, Reeta tweeted that she was moving permanently to work across all BBC One news bulletins. Her final BBC News channel broadcast ended shortly before 6pm on Wednesday 29th March 2023.
On Thursday 29th May 2024, she presented her final edition of the BBC News at One from its London studios, before it moved to MediaCityUK in Salford.
In July 2024, she presented analysis of the results on the BBC One General Election results programme, having already done so on election night in 2019.
On radio, Reeta has presented BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight.
Reeta is a fan of the poet John Keats and chose his work as her specialist subject on the BBC TV quiz Celebrity Mastermind (broadcast 22nd December 2016).
She is an honorary fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, and has received honorary degrees from UCL, York St John, UEL and Bath Spa University.
She is a trustee of the Keats Shelley Memorial Association, and of BBC Media Action.
In 2018, she was made an honorary graduate and received a Doctor of Letters.
In March 2020, she replaced the former Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu as Chancellor of York St John University.
In May 2024, Harper Collins announced they were publishing her first novel, Finding Belle.
She is married to Paul Hamilton (Professor of English at Queen Mary University of London) and has three children.
Correspondence
Paul R. Jackson corresponded with Reeta in August 2024 about her career.
How did the Radio 5 Live job come about and did you always want to get into broadcasting?
“I had done an in-house BBC news training scheme, before applying for the 5 Live job. I had always wanted to be a journalist, and initially thought I would go into print because I felt that writing was my strength.
“But it so happened that broadcasting was the road that opened up to me, and so that is the one that I took. And of course at the heart of good broadcasting is good writing.”
Was it a conscious decision to move from reporting into the studio, or was it more organic?
“‘Organic’ is a good word to describe my move from reporting to presenting.
“An opportunity to fill in occasionally was offered by my then editor, which I jumped at, and then things progressed very quickly and I found myself much more in the studio than out and about.
“But I still describe myself as a presenter and correspondent – I think it’s vital to go on reporting too, to stay connected.”
What story has impacted you most during your career?
“There have been too many stories to isolate just one.
“The Stephen Lawrence murder and the numerous developments that came from it, will always stay with me. But otherwise like all news hounds, I tend to be absorbed in whatever big story is going on.
“Some of my foreign reporting – in Bangladesh with the refugee Rohingya people; in Lviv at the beginning of Russia’s war on Ukraine; and in Jerusalem at the start of the Israel/Gaza war, stand out.”
Personal information
Clips of Reeta on The TV Room
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Online presence
Acknowledgements
PICTURED: Reeta Chakrabarti. COPYRIGHT: BBC.
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