Sylvia Belle Biography

Sylvia was born on February 23, 1938. She was an American broadcast journalist and a correspondent for ABC’s 20/20 from its inception until 1985 where she left to become a news anchor and later in 1685, she returned to ABC News in New York.

Sylvia Belle Early Life And Education

Sylvia was born in Northfield of Minnesota where she graduated from Northfield High School. Her aunt was a radio announcer in Minneapolis but Sylvia and her sister produced a local radio show on news from the school while they were in junior school. Sylvia was the youngest among the three children at home.

She had foster parents because her parents divorced early in her childhood. She refused a scholarship from Wellesley College to join her sister studying at the University of California in Los Angels where her father was living. Her father died before she starts classes. She also worked her way through a degree in English and graduated in 1961.

Sylvia Belle Career

She was the manager of the UCLA urban extension program and after graduating she became the temporary secretary and receptionist where she models on weekends at I. Margins. She also worked for Democratic California legislator and managed political campaigns in the state for some time. She went to work as a reporter at KNX and then a CBS radio station in 1969.

In 1971, she moved to New York where she worked for CBS News and became a correspondent in 1974 where she was a writer and narrator for a new radio show called The American Woman which replaced the radio version of the advice column Dear Abby. In the Walters Cronkite era of the CBS Evening News, she was the earliest prominent woman reporters persuading the network to cover stories as the Coalition of Labor Union Women conference of Chicago in 1974, where she served as a role model.

Sylvia anchored CBS News-break and hosted the daytime Magazine news show and also made an appearance on 60 Minutes. In 1977, she transferred to ABC News where she was the general assignment correspondent and co-anchor of ABC News Weekend Report.

In late 1985, she left for San Francisco to take a job as a news anchor at KRON. She later stated that ABC News president Roone Arledge’s cancellation of a 20/20 story she had worked on based on a book by Anthony Summers about Marilyn Monroe’s relationships with President Kennedy and his brother Bobby Kennedy, which was to have been featured in that year’s season premiere, had precipitated the move after being shortened and postponed, the segment was canceled shortly before it was to have aired. At the time of her move, she denied a connection, and that her resignation was related to that of Geraldo Rivera, who left shortly before her after criticizing the decision.

In her addition to co-anchor the station’s broadcasting news she also hosted news documentaries like one on the environmental degradation in Leningrad and also frequently reported on the AIDS crisis and on children. She was in Europe when the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake struck the Bay Area.

In late 1990, she returned to ABC News in New York, telling the San Francisco Chronicle’s columnist Herb Caen, Sylvia said that she hated to leave the Bay Area, but if she is going to get mugged she might as well be in New York. Following her investigative report on the death of Kimberly, the US Centers for Disease Control and the American Dental Association both increased requirements for sterilization of dental equipment.

Sylvia Belle Award

Her awards include the 1983 Pinnacle Award in Television News,1983 National Headliner Award for Outstanding Investigative Reporting, the three Emmy Award for local news, the National Headliner Award in 1979,1983 and 1994, and the 1991 Matrix Award from New York Women in communication.

Sylvia Belle Personal Life

Chase married to Robert Rosenstone while in college. She has 80 years.

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