(RoyalPatriot.com )- Uma Pemmaraju, a founding Fox News Channel anchor, died at 64. Her cause of death was not immediately revealed.
Pemmaraju was an anchor when the cable news channel began in October 1996. She was one of the rare Indian-American news anchors to make it to the national level.
Fox issued a statement saying they were very saddened by the passing of Uma Pemmaraju, one of Fox News Channel’s original anchors. “She was on the air the day we debuted,” they said.
Uma was a great journalist and a kind and wonderful lady recognized for her generosity. Suzanne Scott, CEO of Fox News Media, sent her family their sympathies.
Pemmaraju’s initial duty at the news station was anchoring Fox News Now and Fox On Trends. She resigned from the network but returned in 2003 as an anchor fill-in host.
Pemmaraju presented Fox News Live and The Fox Report, interviewing high-profile newsmakers like the Dalai Lama.
Born in Rajahmundry, India, but reared in San Antonio, Texas, Pemmaraju developed her journalism skills at local TV stations in Dallas, Baltimore, and then WBZ Boston.
In Baltimore, she received an Emmy for a piece on a youngster who nearly drowned.
She subsequently proceeded to New York to help create Fox News Channel.
In a 1993 interview with the Boston Globe, Pemmaraju claimed she focused on tales concerning the disadvantaged.
I’m a conduit to aid others. I don’t want to sound nostalgic. I want to use my popularity to help others.
One notable moment occurred in Boston in 1990. As she was ready to film a feature story at a convenience shop, two masked guys robbed it.
“I’ve been sent to crime scenes before, but this was the first time one came to me,” she told the Boston Globe.
Her passion for journalism began at an early age. Her grandpa was a newspaper publisher; as a kid, she kept a notebook about foreign events she had watched on TV.
She worked for a local newspaper and TV station as a kid and in college.
Pemmaraju got multiple Emmys for reporting and investigative journalism.
When not in front of the camera, she taught journalism at Emerson College in Boston and Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
