India-born Fox News Channel anchor Uma Pemmaraju, who helped launch the network in 1996 dies aged 64

One of the founding Fox News Channel anchors, Uma Pemmaraju, has died at the age of 64.

Pemmaraju was behind the anchor desk when the cable news channel launched in October 1996. 

At the time, she was one of the only Indian-American news anchors who had managed to make it to the national level. 

‘We are deeply saddened by the death of Uma Pemmaraju, who was one of Fox News Channel’s founding anchors and was on the air the day we launched. 

Uma Pemmaraju is pictured alongside her daughter, Kirina Alana Devi, right

‘Uma was an incredibly talented journalist as well as a warm and lovely person, best known for her kindness to everyone she worked with. We extend our heartfelt condolences to her entire family,’ said Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott.

Pemmaraju’s first role at the news channel was anchoring Fox News Now and Fox On Trends.

She then left the network but rejoined once again in 2003 as an anchor fill-in host on the channel.

Pemmaraju also hosted other programs on the cable network including Fox News Live and The Fox Report interviewing many high-profile newsmakers, including the Dalai Lama.

Born in India but raised in San Antonio, Texas having moved there at the age of six, Pemmaraju learned her journalism skills working at local television stations in Dallas, Baltimore and then WBZ Boston. 

In Baltimore she won an Emmy Award for a report about the rescue of a child who nearly drowned.

Pemmaraju learned her journalism skills working at local television stations in Dallas and then WBZ Boston, pictured above

Uma Pemmaraju, left, is pictured alongside her daughter, Kirina Alana Devi, center

She then moved to New York to help launch the Fox News Channel.

In a 1993 interview with the Boston Globe, Pemmaraju said that she tried to focus her reporting on stories about those who were disenfranchised.

‘I’m 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.’ 

One memorable moment occurred while 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,” she told the Boston Globe.

Her 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.

Pemmaraju received several Emmy awards during her career for reporting and investigative journalism. 

When not in front of the lens, she also taught journalism at Emerson College in Boston and at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The cause of her death has not been made public.

In a 1993 interview with the Boston Globe , Pemmaraju said that she tried to focus her reporting on stories about those who were disenfranchised. She is pictured at WBZ Boston