Jeta Xharra is a leading journalist in Western Balkans who initiated the Reporting House in Kosovo while running the biggest non-governmental organization in Kosovo, Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) with 70 staff.
She got into journalism working as a fixer/local producer for BBC News in 1998 and later became the manager of the BBC Kosovo Bureau, that is how she got to know most of the international journalists who then became contributors to Reporting House. She was a local producer for the BBC News producing the exclusive filming during the Prekaz battle on 6 of March 1998 with cameraman Vaughan Smith and translator of a rare interview with Fehmi Lladrovci, an epic guerilla fighter who got killed 2 weeks after the interview was broadcast on the BBC. Twenty six years after this material was filmed, she initiated the digitalization of all Kosovo archive shot by Frontline TV News that was kept in pristine condition by Smith, the biggest contributor to Reporting House.
She is most known in Kosovo for being leading anchor and editor of “Jeta ne Kosove” (“Life in Kosovo”), that was broadcasted in prime-time in Kosovar public TV, the only Kosovo program profiled in New York Times. She is now anchor of Kallxo Pernime, a current affairs program that is broadcast 3 times a week in RTV Dukagjini.
She completed an MA in War Studies at King’s College London (2000), and gained a distinction for an MA in Screenwriting from the London College of Printing (2002). Reporting House merges her education in history and screenwriting and her experience in journalism both in war-time and post-war Kosovo.
Xharra is an investigative journalist that has trained journalists in post-conflict and conflict situations in Lebanon and Ukraine (2017 & 2023).
She has experience in moderating over 550 public debates with panelists from political parties, civil society and international community in Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia, Serbia & Montenegro from 2004 and is an experienced speaker and lecturer in many interantional forums.
Xharra has published a front-page article in the Independent and written for the Economist, Sunday Telegraph and Jane’s Intelligence Review (1999-2004). While in the UK, Xharra worked for the Foreign News Planning Desk at the BBC World Service (1999-2004), Institute for War and Peace Reporting and in 2005 she became one of the founders of Balkan Investigative Reporting Network.
In 2012 the South East Europe Media Organisation, SEEMO, named Jeta Xharra as winner of the 2012 Dr Erhard Busek – SEEMO Award for Better Understanding in South East Europe and in 2021 she won the EU award for the Best Investigative Story in Kosovo.
