Breaking News: Renowned Journalist and a Founding Anchor at Fox News Uma Pemmaraju Dies at 64
- She was one of the first Indian American women to anchor a news show on national television.
Uma Pemmaraju, one of the founding anchors of Fox News, died on Aug. 8. She was 64, and is survived by her daughter Kirina. A cause of death was not immediately released. She was one of a handful of anchors who helped launch the network in October 1996 and was one of the first Indian American women to anchor a news show on national television.
In a statement, Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott said Pemmaraju, “was an incredibly talented journalist as well as a warm and lovely person, best known for her kindness to everyone she worked with.” She was one of the few non-Caucasian anchors on the right-wing network.
Pemmaraju was born in India and was raised in Texas, where she began her journalism career. She started working as a producer and reporter for KENS-TV and the San Antonio Express-News. She then went on to work for KTVT-TV in Dallas, WMAR-TV in Baltimore, and WLVI and WBZ-TV in Boston, after which she jumped to Fox News Channel. She has anchored news shows such as Fox News Now, Fox On Trends, weekend editions of Fox News Live, and The Fox Report. She left the network and then returned in 2003 as an anchor and substitute host.
She also had stints at Bloomberg News in New York and, early in her career, worked at the San Antonio Express News.
Over the course of her career, she received numerous Emmy awards for her reporting and investigative journalism. She also received the Texas AP Award for reporting, The Woman of Achievement Award from the Big Sisters Organization of America, and the Matrix Award from Women in Communications. Boston Magazine in 1996 and 1997 named her “Boston’s Best Anchor.”
In addition to that, she taught journalism courses at Emerson College and Harvard University. She attended Trinity University in Texas, where she got a degree in political science.
According to news reports, Pemmaraju’s interest in journalism began at a young age. Her grandfather was a newspaper publisher and as a child, she would keep a diary writing about world news that she had seen on television. As a teenager and throughout college she worked for a local newspaper and television station.
She told the Boston Globe in a 1993 interview that she tried to focus her reporting on stories about those who were disenfranchised. “Im a conduit to help other people. I don’t want to sound too sentimental. But that’s what I’m about. I want to use my celebrity to help people, to help bring about something that needs to be done.”
She also recalled an incident that occurred while she was working in Boston in 1990. Just as she was preparing to film a feature story at a convenience store, two masked men raced into the store and conducted a robbery. “I’ve been sent out to crime locations before, but this was the first time one came to me.
Several people in the news media and politics mourned her death on Twitter. David Wade, news anchor on WBZ-TV, where Pemmaraju worked from 1992 to 1996, said that her family told him that she was “a ‘noble soul and pioneer’ as an Indian Asian American news woman of prominence.”
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee called her “a cherished friend” and “a beautiful person inside and out.”
Journalist Reena Ninan, who also worked for Fox News, tweeted that Pemmaraju “ was the only South Asian face on American national TV news, I remember fondly from the 90’s.”