Reeta Chakrabarti
Reeta Chakrabarti is a BBC News presenter and correspondent with three decades of experience. She presents the One, Six and Ten O'Clock News on BBC One, BBC weekend news and also reports at home and abroad. She was previously Education and Social Affairs correspondent, and spent many years reporting politics from Westminster.
Career
Reeta started at the BBC in the early 1990s as a producer on Radio 4, working on the Today programme, the World at One and PM before becoming a reporter on 5 Live Breakfast, during which time she covered the French presidential elections, and the Dunblane killings.
She later became a general news correspondent working in television as well as radio. In 1997, she became the BBC Community Affairs Correspondent, covering the Stephen Lawrence inquest, and subsequent public inquiry. She has also covered home affairs, including the Damilola Taylor murder trial; and Health.
As a Political Correspondent from 1999, Reeta worked across a range of programmes in television and radio, reporting for BBC One, BBC Two, BBC News Channel, Radio 4 and Radio 5 Live. During this time, Reeta covered three general elections, and several changes of party leaders, with other notable stories including the cash for honours affair and MPs expenses scandal.
In 2011 Reeta became Education Correspondent, where she covered changes to university tuition fees, the introduction of free schools, growth in academies and changes to exams and the curriculum
In 2014 Reeta was appointed as a news presenter on BBC One and the BBC News Channel. She has also continued to report on important stories from across the world including anchoring BBC coverage of the 70th anniversary of the partition of India and Pakistan and joining the studio team for the 2019 general election and 2020 US presidential election.
In 2022, Reeta was the main BBC presenter in Lviv, Ukraine.
In 2024, Reeta was in the Studio for the general election coverage, analysing results as they came in and presented the State Opening of Parliament for BBC One.
Reeta has appeared on Celebrity Mastermind with John Keats as her specialist subject, she finished second. She has also been on a celebrity episode of Only Connect for Comic Relief and appeared, alongside her daughter, in a Children in Need special episode of Bargain Hunt
In 2020 Reeta became Chancellor of York St John University succeeding Archbishop Dr John Sentamu in the role.
Books
Reeta is an avid reader who chaired the judges for the 2021 Costa Book Awards and was a judge for the David Cohen Prize for Literature in 2021.
Her debut novel Finding Belle will be published in May 2025.
Awards
In 2018 Reeta was made an Honorary Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford and an Honorary Doctor of Letters by York St John University. In 2019 Rita was made an Honorary Fellow of University College, London
Personal Life
Reeta is a Patron of Pan Intercultural Arts, a UK charity dedicated to the exploration of cultural diversity through the arts. She is a Trustee of the Keats - Shelley Memorial Association.
Reeta lives in North London with her husband and three children.
