Uma Pemaraju, an Indian-American television journalist, had a successful local station in Boston and was hired in 1996 as one of the founding anchors for Fox News Channel, where he worked for nearly 20 years. He died at home on the 7th. Ossining, New York She was 64 years old.
Her daughter, Kirina Petkun, confirmed her death but did not give a cause.
PemarajuIt was on air when Fox News was launched by Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes on October 7, 1996. News Live and The Fox Report. She has interviewed a wide range of newsmakers and celebrities, including the Dalai Lama, Deepak Chopra and Senator John McCain.
“She takes her role very seriously and wanted to know that all information was verified and that she was speaking factually,” said former vice president of weekend news and programming for Fox News. President David Clarke said in a telephone interview.
Pemaraj left Fox in 2018 to join Bloomberg News as an anchor. However, nine months later he needed surgery on his back and he left the network. She was recently working on a book about everyday people who perform heroic deeds.
“She felt that in our culture where a lot of things are negative, we needed a story that would lift our spirits,” Petkun said.
Uma Devi Pemaraju was born on March 31, 1958 in Rajahmundry, India. His father Rao Pemaraju was a scientist and his mother Rani Pemaraju was a housewife. Uma was a baby when her family moved to San Antonio.
As a young man, Pemaraj kept a journal about her thoughts on world affairs, worked as a part-time reporter for the San Antonio Express News in high school, and interviewed one of her heroes, Walter Cronkite, in 1977. . She is the anchor of “CBS Evening News”. She graduated in 1980 with a BA in Political Science and Journalism from Trinity College in Antonio while working at a local television station.
Her parents were concerned that journalism was a dangerous and precarious career choice and wanted her to become a doctor or a lawyer. “They had a hard time accepting that this was a real career for a woman,” said Ms. Petkun. “So she made Swami, who is very close to her family, understand to her parents that this is a real possibility and not just a fantasy.”
Pemaraj moved to Boston in 1984 after working for a TV station in Baltimore and winning one local Emmy Award. There her career took off. She anchored the 10pm news program on her WLVI-TV and was a reporter for “Evening She’s a Magazine”. She’s on WBZ-TV. (One story she was reporting from a supermarket was interrupted by a robbery.) She later became a broadcast anchor and won two more local Emmy Awards for the role. I liked interesting stories.
“I am a conduit to help people,” she told The Boston Globe in 1993. But that’s what I’m going for. I want to use celebrities to help people. ”
Pemmaraju was hired by Fox News by Boston native Chet Collier, who was the channel’s senior programming executive. She worked at Fox for about three years, took time off for the birth of her daughter in 1999, moved to Dallas to become a local anchor, and she returned to Fox News in 2003.
In addition to her daughter, she is survived by her mother. Her brothers, Rama and Sankar Pemaraju. Her ex-husband, Andrew Petkun, sold her family-owned furniture business in Boston and joined Ms. Pemaraj in New York when she joined Fox News.