Independent Lens

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Marion Stokes recorded television 24 hours a day for 30 years. She became aware of the power of television to misinform people. Taping these programs was a form of activism.

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Filmmaker Matt Wolf brings us the remarkable story of one woman's efforts to expose media bias. And I think maybe a re-examination of what is normal is in order at this point. What's the purpose of continually taping? I think it was for the betterment of mankind. She was very, very much ahead of her time. She hit record, and she never stopped. "Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project," now, only on "Independent Lens."

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At $5 a barrel less-- - Water was 10 feet-- Stretch it out. First ball-- - But if we take away-- Led to this-- - Now to the protest-- No, no, no! -

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Peruvian jetliner-- - 600-piece-- A gay man was shot to death--

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Only 72 seconds following liftoff, the tragic explosion. The "Challenger" was engulfed in flames. In Iran, the war is a holy crusade promoted on television with martial music and-- Ayatollah is in a war. People always ask, "Why? Why did she do it?" And to understand that, you really need to know who my mother was and the life she lived. I know her life is strange and questionable by many. But I know she was here for a purpose. A lot of craziness produces a lot of brilliance, and I think there's something kind of brilliant about what Marion Stokes did. Whatever motivated her, this material needed to wind up in a situation where it could be shared. Do expect it to tighten as more and more Dole supporters sort of come out of the closet. Taping these programs for my mother was a form of activism. She wanted people to be able to seek the truth and check facts. She thought that everybody needed to have access to knowledge to make good decisions, to have the real truth. How useful is it at making life better, making my life better and making life for other people better? Now, if it is useful... - Mm-hmm. If it's a useful correlation, a way of looking at things, if it enhances my freedom because I can make choices... Rather than be buffeted like a leaf in the wind, but I can make choices, if it enhances my freedom, then I don't have to see the physical cause of why it works. I'm sure she came to value what was coming through the screens more than the kind of very problematic, messy stuff that was happening, you know, in her real life.

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I was Mrs. Stokes' chauffeur in Philadelphia. She lived in the richest part of the city. The square itself was surrounded by very expensive apartment buildings. It was the number-one address to have in Philadelphia. My dad had a construction company, and we did a lot of work in Barclay, and that's how we ran into the Stokes, and they had us do their renovations. Very mysterious and very private.

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Her husband, John, would come out and talk to me, and I would speak to Marion through the door. She would open the door maybe an inch and talk to me. I would say it was three or four months before I actually met her.

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We were getting close to finishing their place, and they said they would like me to start working for them, helping them do things.

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I was kind of shocked because, you know, I'd never... I guess, been with someone that had so much stuff. They had enormous amount of furniture and archives, magazines, books. She read about 11 newspapers a day, and I don't think she ever threw one out. When I first got there, Ms. Stokes didn't really talk to me. She introduced herself. She laid down what she wanted, what she expected of me, but it was no conversation. She would have the tapes going on different TVs throughout the apartment. So every TV she couldn't get to. So certain TVs, I would change the tapes, and Frank also had TVs in the back that he was taping from, so it was a project for everybody to be doing. Now, there were some codes of conduct that were made very clear to me early on-- no talking. It was like "Driving Miss Daisy" in reverse. Everything was absolutely ritualized. We had to make sure there was no one in the vicinity when we went out the front doors. I wasn't allowed to touch the car, as far as open any doors. That was Richard's job. You know, she would sweep-- shiny black car like a film star.

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I do have a memory of demonstrations, one of which garnered quite a kind of hostile response. There were some postcards sent to my mother saying, "You know, well, if you don't like it here, go to Cuba." She was the Philadelphia chairman for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, an organization started by the Communist Party to raise awareness about the Cuban Revolution. At her core, she was motivated by a belief in human freedom. They spent some time in Mexico trying to get in. Didn't get in. I found a journal entry from my mother from around that time where she was fed up with something, and she said, "I'm going back to the United States and taking the baby." So I think there was a lot of tension. My mother was fired from her job as a librarian, and I'm pretty sure it had to do with her being a Communist. You know, she was definitely spied on by the FBI, and we know that she had a file, and, you know, there are pictures of her and reports from networks of informants and that kind of stuff. She was justified in feeling being watched. For personality reasons, I think my mother kind of overdid it and continued to overdo it until the day of her death. She was enormously controlling. She made it very difficult on my father when he would come to visit. So saw him less and less.

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Tore my heart.

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Captain's log, stardate 5784.2. We are responding to desperate distress calls from an unknown-- My mother was a huge fan of the original "Star Trek" series. Unable to account for this, since he reported no signs of life on the planet. The themes that she really liked were that Earth had actually sorted its problems out. There was the United Federation of Planets, that there was this kind of multiracial, multinational crew that worked very well together, that the mission of this incredibly well-armed ship was exploration, not warfare. You know, it was basically kind of televised socialism, and she loved that whole thing.

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The first Betamax recorder I remember was in late '75. And that was the first one. It was used sparingly. She didn't start recording the news immediately. She liked situation comedies... Where are you going? - Where am I going? Where else can I go? I'm going over here, sit down. Eh? Do what I usually do-- look at TV. Science documentaries... Snakes, lizards have a-- These kind of high-impact current events. First, it gathers information, intelligence. There's a second kind of thing that the CIA does, and that's take secret action to change what goes on in another country. This could involve giving money to help a candidate win an election. It might involve aiding in the overthrow of a government which we think is a threat to us. It could even mean arranging or trying to arrange an assassination, as in the case of Fidel Castro. Your newspapers, radio, television, motion pictures are under state control. No dissent or opposition is allowed in the public media. One of Lenin's principles was that the method and the tenor through which you take your daily news colors your view of the world. Material things do influence our emotions, and we do react in an emotional way to various symbols, colors, and so on, and some of these things are chosen. They're decided by somebody. Now, it seems to me-- She became aware of the power of television to inform or misinform people when she started working on a television program in the late 1960s. It was called "Input." It was a current-affairs discussion program by the local CBS affiliate in Philadelphia. They would assemble experts on a topic-- eugenics, Native American rights, race relations, prisoners' rights-- with perspectives all around the situations and have it very publicly available so that people would be able to form their own opinions. Completely eradicate-- Walking down death row I sang for three men destined for the chair Marion, how do you view the last nine programs, as we've sought to make this an open community type of TV presentation? Well, I find some people are certainly grappling with and not quite understanding how it is that we managed to get these people together in the first place to talk and not understanding the concept of an open community of trust which is big enough and open enough to include all the points of view expressed within a context of respect. I've been invited to openness by those who really are saying by that, "I want to open you so that you'll be able to see that I'm right and you're wrong." Mm-hmm. Most people feel that their viewpoint is being heard, but they find themselves unable to accept the open expression of the other viewpoint. The power of mass media to affect public opinion was something that she became very conscious of, and she was aware of how the raw story gets filtered by the predilections of the people who are producing it. I think there should definitely be controls of other kinds as well, of material means of manipulating mind and emotion, and I think there are so many examples in daily life that people simply don't recognize.

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From ABC in New York, this is "World News Tonight, Sunday," with Sam Donaldson. Good evening. The US embassy in Tehran has been invaded and occupied by Iranian students. The Americans inside have been taken prisoner and, according to a student spokesman, will be held as hostages until the deposed Shah is returned from the United States where he's receiving medical treatment for cancer.

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While the Iranians burned an American flag in front of the embassy, they said the takeover had the express blessing of the Ayatollah Khomeini. My mother was very suspicious of the official stories about the Iranian hostage crisis, and she became obsessed with the media coverage. She felt that important information was being lost as the story evolved.

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So she kept taping. Some 60 Americans, including our fellow citizen whom you just saw bound and blindfolded, are now beginning their sixth day of captivity inside the US embassy in Tehran. Officials will continue their search for some way to negotiate the hostages' freedom.

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The story changed. A lot of the early reports indicated that there were, for example, CIA personnel among the hostages, and then suddenly there weren't. Obviously, if you were running an intelligence agency, it would be perfectly reasonable for them to suppress that information, but my mother was very conscious of that. A series of attempts to negotiate the release-- She was saying, "Well, we got to get this. Nobody else is gonna keep this." This to restore military balance with the Soviet Union and... Her goal was trying to reveal a set of agendas on the part of governments. Soviet troops had swept into Afghanistan, dramatically changing the power game in the Persian Gulf. As much as it would like to, the United States can no longer encourage disintegration of authority in Iran in order to free the hostages. Day 59, January 1st, an angry mob of Afghan and Iranian demonstrators storm the Soviet embassy in Tehran, but this time, Khomeini's revolutionary guards evict the protesters.

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That same day, UN Secretary General Waldheim arrives in Tehran to negotiate the release of the hostages. She was kind of watching these positionings and maneuverings, public opinion being molded, kind of uniformly anti-Iran. People were calling for, you know, war. People were calling for all kinds of things. She felt that there was a lack of sympathy for the goals of the Iranian Revolution. One analyst says, "Khomeini so strongly detests the US "for its support of the Shah, who was his lifetime enemy, "but also because he considers Americans Satan's people and leaders of the decadent West." Outside the United States embassy in Tehran this morning, the crowds once again took up their daily chanting and sign waving, especially for the television cameras.

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During that crisis, she hit record, and she never stopped.

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"America Held Hostage" aired first for 15 minutes and then for a half hour. It's actually a kind of successful show to the point that "Nightline" was born. "Nightline" was actually a very transformative program in the history of American television. Several Iranian health representatives spent some--

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30 at night aired essentially in competition with the evening talk shows like "The Tonight Show," and then something kind of amazing happens. It actually is watched by a lot of people. Good evening. Some of the rhetoric coming out of Iran today was reminiscent of the early weeks of this crisis. There was a long-running drama, which had the capacity to change every day unpredictably. So it had a beautiful dramatic structure. It had lots of unpredictable characters, many subevents. There has been a startling new development in the Iran hostage crisis. A US attempt to launch a military rescue of the American hostages in Tehran has been, as you have now heard several times, aborted. Eight US servicemen killed in the process. And it had this kind of agonizing pathos of being taken hostage. Not only were the Americans held in the embassy in Tehran hostage, but everybody else was a hostage, too. The TV was part of what was taking us hostage. I am just told that the Associated Press reports that the hostages are leaving the airport. Imagine that. We are within half an hour of the transition of power. Ted, can you come in and give us any late information on the hostages? Yes, I can. UPI has just gone with a flash, which is, in effect, the highest, the most important notification and news that they can give. The last time they did it was with the Kennedy assassination. It's two words. It says, "Hostages freed." They're free. They're free, Mr. President. They're free, Mr. President. We've had press reports that they're free. They're freed? - The hostages. We've had press reports. What do you have to say about that? What do you have to say, sir? There's only one thing to say--thank God. One of the most dramatic freedom pictures that we've all ever seen, those, the 52 American hostages, now officially designated the returnees out of Iran. The Iranian hostage crisis happened in 1979, and CNN launched in 1980. So my mother started taping really at the birth of the 24-hour news cycle. The news 24 hours every day. Then she really went into high gear. I recall there were times when there were eight recorders going at once. Those were special occasions. Normally, there were three to five tapes recording. People would say things like, "Well, of course the station is going to keep everything." And, of course, we know now that the stations don't keep everything. She understood that this was changing. The speed of news was increasing and that you'd find news in places that you wouldn't have found it in order to fill that space.

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The idea of a news show at 11

With new capabilities for recording that and for tracking that process, she was watching public opinion being molded in this new medium. I mean, I don't think it was joyful to her, this taping. And if the tape wasn't going, she was not happy. She couldn't leave the apartment without having a tape in, and if we came in and the tape stopped, she was upset, too, because she didn't get it all. "The tape has ended. What happened?" You know, so it was the disaster for the day. We had to go back to the Barclay in between things to change the tapes. She always knew exactly when one of the tape machines would stop.

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There's a system with your TV where you can record stuff, but she didn't want that. She was concerned someone else would know what she was taping, and she said, "I can tape what I want, and people don't really know what I'm actually taping." The predawn retrieval of Elin Gonzlez came as many had begun thinking that a voluntary handover was in the offing. A moment-by-moment account on how things changed from NBC's Pete Williams. She would often ask the people, you know, like Rittenhouse Camera, to send the tapes in black trash bags. I guess she felt insecure in a way that people were talking about her behind her back or something. You know, she would always tell me, "Frank, I don't look like you, and you don't understand what I've been through," and how people judge her. When she moved into the Barclay, she said she had gotten comments from different residents saying she didn't belong there. She was secretive about the process of recording partly because she was secretive about everything but partly because people kind of viewed it as kind of nutty. Lucy Coleman and Lisha are identical twins, and they're celebrating. Wednesday they'll be 100 years old. The odds of twins living a century are said to be one in 700 million. This is the greatest thing this town has ever had. And it's signed "Ronald Reagan." That's fine. Thank you. You're very welcome. - Yeah. That's from the president. - I know. She told her husband ten years ago that she wanted to be buried in her beloved Cadillac. So, after the 62-year-old woman died of cancer on Thursday, she got her wish. After the car was lowered into the vault by the crane, the woman's casket was placed on top of the car. They are still trying to reach little Jessica McClure. She's 18 months old. She's been trapped in a narrow pipe 20 feet belowground in Midland, Texas, for nearly 24 hours now. The child fell while playing with other toddlers yesterday morning. Rescuers are now trying to tunnel through rock to reach Jessica. Buford, South Carolina, is a tranquil sort of place. How loud can you be when you love God? Placid and tranquil until the preachers hit the streets. If you are found without the blood of Jesus Christ, you will be cast alive into a lake of fire! She did remark periodically on how small events from small-town America would occasionally make it onto CNN, which would never have made the national news. She was concerned with how that 24-hour news cycle was being filled and what effect that would have. Since the first of the year, a new law allows German citizens free access to secret files kept on them by the former East German secret police. For decades, the police, known as Stasi, spied on thousands of Germans. The East German secret police had an extraordinarily efficient spy apparatus, collecting information on an estimated 6 million people. The law not only gives victims access to their files but lets them see the names of those who spied against them. Truthfulness will not cushion the pain, as East Germans discover just who spied on whom, including friends, neighbors, and even family. She was obsessed with the mediation of media, you know, how media reflects a society back to itself. Exploitation of tearful widows, cases of blatant sensationalism and the manipulation of the press by politicians. And although accusing the press of looking bad may seem to be fashionable, Chancellor says it doesn't square with the facts. The polling data that I have seen and the people I've talked to around the country show that those of us who are in it are far more worried about its credibility than those who see it or read it. The public is fairly content with the journalism it's getting in America today. I was thinking, "What's the purpose of continually taping?" But I didn't ask her about it. I think it was for the betterment of mankind. They are coming essentially out of the same background and have pretty much the same biases and stereotypes and approaches to life that you have. You talk among yourselves in a technical language, which is to exclude the rest of us from being able to evaluate, in terms of reality, our lives. You need to deal with people who are living a different reality than yours. It seemed like she was always interested in getting different people together and having them live together peaceably. John and Marion were working on this "Input" TV series together, and I guess they just bonded. To have a confrontation, let's say Jewish-Christian or black-white or youth-adult, whichever the course is, they, too, come together as communities prepared to hear honestly what they don't normally hear so that this concept of really opening yourself is what I'm attempting to help develop here. My father and Marion were producers on the shows. I completely believe they were really fighting for justice and freedom and that they each in their own way were really committed to that. Any conceptual prejudice or any misinformation which may exist can be gotten out on the table, and when it's examined in this spirit of affirmation, even if the affirmation is only coming, let's say, one way... Mm-hmm. - The belief is that somehow this can be deflated and looked at so that the goodness begins to bubble through. I was kind of intrigued by him, to say the least. You know, I was this guy from the street corner, and this is this rich guy in Chestnut Hill. I knew he didn't work 'cause he was always around in the daytime. So I said, "This guy is too rich to work." John wanted something organized. It was real '60s type of thing, and we'd hang out together. He would pick a topic, and then we would discuss it. His quest was always how we're going to change the structure. This phoniness, this role-playing, this not getting through to each other, this creating images for each other, and all this type of thing has got to go. I was the rabble-rouser. I realized he was trying to do the same things I was trying to do. Marion had that same goal. I respect a person who will deal with my ideas or with the situation, the reality of the situation, not my credentials, that I use feminine wiles or that I say it the right way. You see? That's what's wrong with black folks. We don't say it the right way. If we just did, everything would be all right, and if women would just, you know, say it politely and make them think it's their idea and so on, then there wouldn't be all this trouble, and why are we now rocking the boat? I think we can deal with it better. Well, I don't accept that totally... They were talking about process, and my mother said, "If I'm in charge, everybody can be equal," which is the kind of thing that you might expect from someone transitioning out of the Communist Party. You talked about faith in the democratic process. You know, when people are killed on the courthouse steps, you know, for going up to register to vote, now, how can you expect black people to have faith in the democratic process? If you want us to have faith in the democratic process, make it work. It's your process. - I'm with you. Make it work. - I'm with you. All of us together. Not I make it work, but would you join me? No, you make it work! - Would you join me? You keep me out of your institutions. I should keep you out? No, you have kept me out of your institutions. Your institutions are what run this country. But if we are opening the door and saying, "Come. Let's sit down and talk"-- Make your process work first, and then-- You don't want to come in and reason together? You don't want me in there. See, you're only talking as you as an individual. Marion was a very intelligent, very sharp, very determined person to get her points across. I think John was attracted to that.

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The idea of a news show at 11

I think a lot of it had to do with them having very similar ideals, and my mother really wasn't into social issues. She was an artist. She cared about how things looked, and she was not a deeply spiritual person at all. Unfortunately, I think my mother felt very accused by him, and I think that really distressed my mom a lot.

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The idea of a news show at 11

I'm trying to make a positive input in society instead of hanging on some set of norms that are prevailing. The answer-- - What is the key to building a type of way of communicating and working together so we will not-- I think he knew he thought very differently about things and wasn't interested in... his social class particularly. He had strong philosophical convictions. The awakening of individuals as to who they are, what their identity is, how they define themselves, whether as a member of a white group or black group, Jewish, Christian. Everyone is saying, "I'm trying to find out who I am." No, I said, John... The working relationship and eventually the romance between these people from different backgrounds really puzzled people. My impression is that the two of them never really felt understood by other people until they really met each other. I knew that he had a family. I remember, you know, seeing him at our house. I think I understood something's going on. You know, as a 10-, 11-year-old, I kind of wasn't welcome. I'd been through college and was living back at home, and I remember coming into the kitchen, and he was almost at the door with a suitcase. And I said, "How long is this for?" I mean, at this point, I was 17. "How long is this for?" And he said, "Well, I'm not really sure." I was able to get horoscopes of two people whom I knew who, let's say, were very much in love or were collaborating together very closely, and I was astounded when these two charts were superimposed that here were these very-- about eight planets were in close correlation or conjunction. There's a certain point where even I'm gonna get it, and I think I got it.

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The idea of a news show at 11

I guess you could call it the pre-marriage honeymoon.

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The idea of a news show at 11

We spent quite a bit of time in London, and then we spent at least a few days in Paris. As a librarian, she'd kind of seen pictures of all this stuff and kind of knew a lot about it. It was just an amazing thing. It was a shift. I understood that we probably weren't going to have to heat the house with gas from the stove anymore. I sort of looked on him, you know, as a bit of a role model. They were married in New Hope, Pennsylvania, 2 days after I turned 13. A lot of John's family was there. That was the first time I met his children. I could see how happy my father was with Marion. It was pretty overwhelming. Each of them accepted their personality quirks, their intensity and intellect at a level that neither of them, I think, had really felt before. Her relationship to John was one of the most deeply satisfying things in her life.

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The idea of a news show at 11

Turn on the machine.

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Pour in almost all the water and then go poom, poom, poom.

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The idea of a news show at 11

This now is a tape of yesterday afternoon's shooting. The assailant now held to the ground. The President, who was immediately pushed into the car. I knew that they recorded things sometimes. 24 hours a day, relaxing-- But I didn't have any sense of it being a specific project. Experience you can trust. This is CBS. Each evening Monday through Friday on-- This is CBS. 24-hour feeds were CNN, Fox, MSNBC that I would put in an 8-hour tape. Marion controlled certain of the VCRs, selectively changing station to station. She was creating a library at home, and she often talked about buying another property that she could put her whole library in. Imagine being able to go to a reference source where you can actually see and hear. Come feel the excitement Of who, what, where, why Open Britannica That sense of kind of stewarding a whole lot of knowledge and actually being able to give it to people struck her sort of democratic sensibilities.

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The idea of a news show at 11

In Afghanistan, increasing numbers of refugees continue crossing the border into Pakistan. The flow of refugees arrive at the rate of about 400 a day in camps set up by the Pakistan government some distance from the border. The New York City transit-worker strike is into its fourth day.

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The idea of a news show at 11

Yes, despite all kinds of traffic jams... Somebody do something! New Yorkers have not allowed the strike to change their usual disposition. This here stinks. - Stinks. Don't bother me. Why don't you do something constructive? Bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk. It's been 2 years since the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, and today the State Department reports that the Soviets seem bogged down in a Vietnam-like no-end situation. Terrorism in Lebanon and in this country and what, if anything, can be done about it. It's an embassy in Kuwait, a department store in London, and, overall, the fear that maybe it could happen here. Ted Turner has announced that his company, Turner Broadcasting System, is putting up a half million dollars to help finance television programs without regard to national origins or politics. Turner's political beliefs were questioned. First of all, I don't think these issues-- in my opinion, these are not right or left or conservative or liberal issues. These are issues that affect everyone. We thank you, Lord!

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The idea of a news show at 11

Civil rights and women's groups rallied over the weekend in Pickens County, Alabama, on behalf of two local black activists who are likely to be sent to prison today for voting fraud-- 69-year-old Julia Wilder, president of the Pickens Voters League and 51-year-old Maggie Bozeman, president of the local NAACP. I would not have been trying to help people had they been able to do it for themself, but we have a lot of illiterate people here that don't understand, and I had been doing absentees for them for years and still gonna plan to do it, you know. What's wrong with the journey of a log cabin to White House, and what's wrong with the journey from peanut plant to the president, if it is within the law? The Constitution provides, if you're 35 years of age or older and an American citizen and you can convince the American electorate to vote for you-- that is the constitutional provision. Computer technology has expanded at an astonishing rate. It helps check out your food and process your income taxes.

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The idea of a news show at 11

Like computer music, computer art is just beginning to be explored, but there are limits. A computer does not have a mind of its own.

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The idea of a news show at 11

A computer does not have a mind of its own. A computer does not have a mind of its own. Very good hands, indeed.

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The idea of a news show at 11

The day the Macintosh computer was announced was a really big deal for my mother. I remember her, like, calling me round to the house to watch the commercial as it was aired. "I want to see it, and I want you to see it." Today we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives we have created. Secure from the pests purveying contradictory truths. Our unification of thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on Earth. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death, and we will bury them with their own confusion. Aah! We shall prevail!

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The idea of a news show at 11

My mother was a huge fan of technology as a way of unlocking people's potential. Now, with Wang's new integrated information system, one person very simply can perform data processing, word processing-- Since the mid-1970s, she'd started collecting VIC-20s and Commodore 64s. Who knows what the future holds? And she was looking for a type of computer that would be easy to use. And Macintosh is saying, "Here is a way "to make personal computers available to the rest of us"... Apple enhanced human freedom. Apple enhanced people's creativity. Apple was her baby. She had an incredible ability to recognize shifts in media and technology, and she reacted to them. She became an evangelist for Apple. She bought enormous amounts of their technology. The first thing she did give me was a Apple computer. She was very interested in us using it and then coming back and telling her what we learned or what, you know, she could learn from it. She had multiple versions of every Apple product ever released. Well, Ted, Apple Computer says it expects profit margins of 20% or better in the coming quarter. She really urged the family trust to invest in Apple early on. I think her first purchases were at about $7 a share, and she'd insist they hold Apple stock in an unwieldy, large, discrete holding, and it went up significantly.

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It definitely increased both the family wealth and her personal wealth. Here's to the crazy ones... the misfits, the rebels... the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently.

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The idea of a news show at 11

She was very much into Steve Jobs. Michael often jokes that Steve was one of her other sons that she had other than just Michael. I remember when Steve Jobs died, the next time I talked to her, she said, "I'm surprised you didn't call when Steve died." And I was like... She really, really identified with Steve Jobs at a very early age, realizing that he was a lot more intelligent than a lot of people around him and being incredibly hard on people. And Steve Jobs' story of being adopted... those things really resonated with my mother.

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The idea of a news show at 11

The route that we took every day was identical, but on that particular day, she decided to come home via Germantown Avenue, and she wanted to go and see her old home. We talked about an extraordinary subject... And that was her youth. I discovered her early life had been very similar to mine. We were both adopted. My mother was born in Philadelphia in 1929, so just after the crash. She was informally adopted. Her mother gave her up ostensibly for economic reasons, but I think my mother tracked her down and found out that she had raised subsequent children. So she felt very betrayed by that. She had a very turbulent childhood, you know, just being passed from family to family. I think that that early sense of abandonment and betrayal really kind of set a lot of my mother's attitudes toward other people. Me being a foster child, we had that in common, too. Me and Richard, we were able to accept it and be more positive about it, but she still held those, you know, hard to her heart as far as her mother, and I feel as though that hindered her life. It really did. She had, I think, heightened and unrealistic standards for how families should behave with each other.

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Three, two, one, and liftoff! Liftoff!

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And it has cleared the tower. I think maybe initially she made efforts. I mean, I would visit some, and she was friendly, but it definitely felt like a barrier to my father. I believe she was seeing it as competing with her. They wanted to do everything together. Everything had to be together. I remember her saying, oh, you know, we probably think of her as the evil stepmother. Well, we didn't, but in some ways, we did. There was no sense of sort of being a family with them because we weren't allowed to talk about other family members. That was considered gossip. Gossip usually affirms some sort of a norm that is a complicity between the two people are gossiping as to the way people should be, and this other person somehow is different. And who decides what's normal? And I think maybe a re-examination of what is normal is in order at this point, because what's normal is simply what we've... Accepted. - Been taught or accepted. The word "dogmatic" comes to mind. If I would disagree with her, I'd get blasted, and Michael said basically she was like that, too.

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The idea of a news show at 11

My mother was-- as someone who'd tape things and kept things, she was absolutely concerned that everyone agreed on the accurate details of what had happened. We would have a six-hour argument with her. I mean, literally, six hours. Obviously I found it difficult.

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The idea of a news show at 11

It was a long point of contention between her and me about my boringly conventional intellect compared to her, which I think is probably accurate. What she wanted was bold thinking, autodidactic, and really outside the mainstream. You know, I just got completely fed up with being controlled, being, in a lot of ways, talked down to. You know, my mother really could quite be very cruel if she thought you weren't kind of intellectually up to her standard. It was kind of, like, a two-day argument going on. I mean, I just remember storming out of a couple of rooms, and my mother said, "Well, nice to have known you." And we just didn't talk a whole lot for a long, long, long time. One of Mr. Reagan's nominees is in trouble in Washington, in trouble for saying that the NAACP is a pinko organization and that a white civil-rights attorney from his home state of Alabama is a disgrace to his race. It's inconceivable to me that a person of this attitude is qualified to be a US attorney, let alone a United States or federal judge. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III-- he was brought face-to-face with things he personally had said, for example, that the NAACP and the Civil Liberties Union are un-American organizations. These comments that you could say about commie organizations or something, I may have said something like that.

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The idea of a news show at 11

Let's start the "Family Feud" winner-take-all spectacular! Thank you, ladies and gentlemen! Two or three years after that rather intense argument, I moved out of the country without telling her. I was really running. So, you know, between the two of us, we just kept it going. A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not. The devastation. - It's hopeless. The despair. I've never seen men cry like they have this year. This is CNN breaking news. Um, because of the... The HIV virus that I have attained, uh... I will have to retire from the Lakers. Feel that your proposal was unfairly denied or ignored because you are a woman or a member of a minority group? If so, the state wants information... Hi from Iraq! We're scouts from the 76 Infantry!

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Good morning, America! We are owned by larger and larger companies. It doesn't make me a radical to be somewhat concerned about white male boardroom view will be even more a feature of the news gathering and reporting. What story isn't be pursued? What story isn't being covered? A part of your party! It is now 1992! Happy New Year!

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Curfew is in effect, as Los Angeles continues to reel from violence in the aftermath of the Rodney King verdict. The South Central part of the city looked like a burning Kuwaiti oil field. One footnote to all of this-- the final episode of "The Cosby Show" aired tonight in Los Angeles. For 8 years, the program held up an ideal of a happy, successful black American family. In the victory of good Over evil Fight the real enemy! In all of this, William Jefferson Clinton has undermined the integrity of his office and has acted in a manner subversive of the rules-- We're leaving this program to bring you live coverage of President Clinton's comments on the military strikes in Iraq. On Wednesday, I ordered our armed forces to strike military and strategic targets in Iraq. When we did talk, it was very, very strained. Could have an hour-long phone conversation with my mother during which there might be 15 minutes of actual talking, and the rest of it was just silence. That is the lunar eclipse from last night. As this century ends, we have seen our last lunar eclipse of the 1900s. In Times Square, eyes are up there on the ball.

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Happy New Year!

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I don't remember how long it had been since I'd contact, but it was a long time because they would not answer the phone. Marion wouldn't or couldn't maybe. One point, I asked her, "Okay, if you don't answer the phone, how are we supposed to get in touch?" She said, "Well, you could FedEx us."

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I just decided, "Well, why don't I just wait and see if I can make contact?" I just sat in Rittenhouse Square and waited to see if he would come out, and he did. He would use a little grocery-shop cart, almost like a walker. He was very stooped over. He's making his way up along 18th Street, and I mean, here I am stalking my dad. So I thought, "Well, I guess I'd better just go up." And I... I did and said, "Oh, here I am. I just happened to see you here." And he seemed very glad to see me. He sat down and said, "Let's talk." The burning question that I had, that really all of us siblings had was... did he not communicate with us because he didn't want to, or was it because of Marion? And he said that his relationship with Marion was the most important thing in his life and that he didn't want to rock the boat. I think he actually used that term. And he said, "Don't ever tell Marion that we spoke here." I considered him something of a wimp. I mean, I have a clear visual memory of him walking and crossing the street and going back into the Barclay apartment building... and not turning around. There's perhaps 20 years that they were isolated in the house. Sometimes I'd get down there in the morning. They were there theirselves sitting in their chairs amidst all these books and magazines and stuff, and if I would come in or whatever, you know, their chairs were side by side, and they'd be holding hands. The way they treated each other was just amazing. They told me they were soul mates. I think, at that point in their life, she had "outsed" everyone. She was content with just her and John, and he sacrificed himself for her. You know, I believe that. He didn't agree with everything, but he humbled himself to allow her to be herself. John was taken in by Ms. Stokes' knowledge. She said, "People can't take knowledge from you." So she pretty much felt as though the fact that she was knowledgeable is what kept her in the family, in John's heart. Would you like to lower your monthly mortgage payments or use the equity in your home to consolidate your credit card or other debts? Just log on-- Camera two. - Yeah. This just in-- you are looking at obviously a very disturbing live shot there. That is the World Trade Center, and we have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. CNN Center right now is just beginning to work on this story, obviously calling our sources and trying to figure out exactly what happened, but clearly something relatively devastating happening this morning there on the south end of the island of Manhattan. That is, once again, a picture of one of the towers of the World Trade Center. Are you guys ready? - We can see these pictures. It's obviously...

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Something devastating has happened. And again, unconfirmed reports that a plane has crashed into one of the towers there. We are efforting more information on this subject as it becomes available to you. Right now we've got Sean Murtagh-- he is a CNN producer-- on the telephone right now. Sean, what can you tell us about what you know? This is Sean Murtagh.

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If a football hero accused of murder is news for months, if every Capitol Hill scandal merits weeks of coverage, how much attention do 2 1/2 million dead merit? It's a story we should've brought you long ago. This week on "Nightline," we'd like to make up for that by finally telling you about the beauty and the tragedy of Congo. 3 years, 2 1/2 million dead. We thought you should know. One of the World Trade Center towers. Sean, what kind of plane? Was it a small plane, a jet? It was a jet. Looked like-- We're going to tell you what we know as we know it, but we just got a report in that there's been some sort of explosion-- at the World Trade Center in New York City. And where were you when you saw this? One report said, and we can't confirm any of this, that a plane may have hit one of the two towers of the World Trade Center. But again, you're seeing the live pictures here. We have no further details than that. We don't know anything

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about what they have concluded happened there this morning. But we're going to find out and, of course, make sure that everybody knows on the air. These are, of course, the two twin Trade Center buildings that are down at the foot of Manhattan. They really are the beacons of New York. It was there that there was the explosion a couple of years ago brought about by terrorists. That's all gone through the courts, but this we don't know anything about. We don't know about anything that has happened here other than the fact that there's obviously been a major incident there, and we're gonna go to a special report now from ABC News....debris that has hit down there, and can you see anything? My vantage point is too far from the World Trade Center to make any determination of that. Do you see any smoke, any flames coming out of the engines of that plane? No, I did not. This is an ABC News special report. It was coming in low......now by the entire ABC network. "Good Morning, America" was in progress on the East Coast and the Midwest, but we're joined by the entire network just to show you some pictures at the foot of New York City. The plane is now coming out the side of the building, and smoke continues to billow.

overlapping conversations

It's 8

52 here in New York. I'm Bryant Gumbel. We understand that there has been a plane crash on the southern tip of Manhattan. Live pictures from New York City.

overlapping conversations

It's 8

Apparently a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, 8:52, with limited information at this point. We don't know about injuries in the building or people on the ground, but obviously this has potential-- There. It does not appear that there's any kind of an effort up there yet. Now, remember-- Oh, my God. Oh, God! - My God.

silence

It's 8

I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you, and the people of--

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It's 8

And the people of-- We didn't have contact for many years, but a month after 9/11 happened, I had written a note saying, "You know, if there's anything you need any help with, I'd be happy to help you." Marion said, "Well, there are some things we could use some help with." And what it was they needed help with was labeling videotapes. There was a wall of tapes, and there were little stickies on them-- CNN, a certain date and time, and they wanted actual labels put on them.

man speaking indistinctly on TV

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It just seems that she was more concerned about not losing any information about what was happening in the world, but that seemed to get in the way of having real contact or information about her family. She collected between 40,000 and 50,000 books. She would buy them at every opportunity. She voraciously read them. I think she said she had nine apartments or homes. We were, like, packed to the gills. She was a hoarder. You know, she hoarded everything. You know, she got obsessed with the syrup containers that you get in diners, so we found, like, 50 of them or something. We weren't allowed to throw anything out. We kept them in bags. We called them burn bags. And we would stick them throughout the apartments. She got different books that said "my life is a mess" and different ones about how intelligent people are hoarders and, you know, live in disarray, you might say.

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Hi, everybody. What do you think we would find if we went to your house with our television cameras and looked into your closet? A mess probably. She would buy stuff, and I would say, "Marion, where do you want me to put it?" And she would say, "Make room." Today we're talking with shopaholics. It was almost like Marion's brain, these apartment rooms, and she knew where she would store stuff. Having all these magazines and books piled up around her and tapes and just walking through these little pathways was who she was. If you took away everything... you would take away Marion. We're taking video tours through shopaholics' closets just to see what exactly they had hidden away. Here is one of our viewers. This one I love, and as soon as I get someplace to wear it... This makes a statement. The difference between a hoarder and a collector is what value someone else finds in what they've got. So if people come to a house and they think it's a pile of junk, then this person is a hoarder. If they think, "Oh, my God, no one has ever kept this before," then suddenly they're a collector. Well, you rarely see them in this good a shape. For example, the fingers are perfect. The bird is in mint condition, and I'd say if this were to go to auction today, conservatively, it would be worth two in the bush. Really? - It's just beautiful. Thank you so much for bringing it in. When you have a institution like a museum or a university and they begin to collect, you don't tend to question why they're doing it. There must be a rational reason, but when you're one lone person and especially a woman, then you're considered to be an outlier. We shouldn't ascribe rationality to those in power and irrationality to those without it. In her mind, there was a purpose to it all. She was always looking into the future. All news had to be kept... for history, for prosperity. We know who shot Trayvon, but police... When something was important, she would want me to sit and watch it with her, like Trayvon Martin. A neighborhood-watch volunteer told Sanford, Florida, police that he was acting in self-defense.

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She wanted to, like, compare the way the news is put out there and how we as a community takes it in. Reporting from Washington, Ted Koppel. The group calls itself MOVE, M-O-V-E. Its membership is predominantly black, and while it describes itself as a back-to-nature movement, that may be an overly benign description of a group that has terrorized its neighbors and has a history of violence. I presume somewhere in that archive you could pull out a sub-archive of racially motivated police brutality. Members of a radical group... Going back and watching in detail how those stories get told, what sort of justifications are offered, what sort of unanswered questions remain. Police dropped a percussion bomb onto this house, trying to flush out members of a radical back-to-the-Earth group known as MOVE. Last night, inside the headquarters of the radical group known as MOVE. Heavily armed members of a radical group known as MOVE. Martin Luther King said that because of television, it was going to be hard to maintain racism because television would show all. If you had things like Rodney King, then how could you not reform racism in the country? They can get it on videotape, and we still can't get a conviction. Well, what happens to the police when they break the law? That question is back again because of Monday's beating of two people by sheriff's deputies from Riverside County, California. Granted, the video doesn't tell you everything, but it sure looks like the deputies were using excessive force, and it sure looks like the Rodney King beating all over again. But isn't it a stretch to try to use this horrible incident as part of your attempt to justify illegal immigration? We are more apt to be the victims of police brutality than any other group. Police use of deadly force against Hispanics has been a very significant problem. A few weeks ago in South Carolina where a state trooper in an unmarked car took a woman who was speeding, manhandled her, threw her on her back, gave her bodily injury, and she was as white as the driven snow.

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Bill, I made an embarrassing mistake. The woman who was manhandled in South Carolina was not white. She was black. I saw the thing about a half a dozen times. It just shows how colorblind I am. Not guilty-- that was the headline across the country today. Three New York police detectives, 50 bullets, and an unarmed 23-year-old shot to death just hours before the man was to be married. Time and time again, these cases are cases of black, blue, and white. Black is the race of the people who are dead. Blue is the uniform who kill them, and white is the race of the people that let those killers go. Wait a minute. But see, but that is the sort of race-baiting-- This is-- They are two police-- That happens to be true! No, there were five people here, five police officers. Two of them were African Americans. We went into a little bit history's web of violence, and I just wondering if this is related in any way to the whole acceptance of violence and killing as an everyday thing. Those in power are able to write their own history from their own bias, and I think an extension of that certainly would be our discussion today of violence which we may not call violence but which is a large-scale violation of the human being potential and total humanity and dignity. She felt until the end that her work was supremely important. And she shared that commitment with John. How can those who are committed to human potential for a cooperative and constructive society-- how can such persons make a breakthrough? How can we get out of the web of violence and break through and help others break through to a more peaceful and cooperative type of society? I remember Marion calling me, like, 3:00

or 4

00 in the morning and saying, "Frank, we have to go to the hospital right away. There's a problem with John." And when we got up there, he was gone. It was very clear that she fundamentally changed as a person, though, afterwards. John was her friend as well as her husband. She became much quieter, more passive in many ways. A lot of her energy drained after his death. She just... would cry sometimes. During the period after his death, she decided to go to Channel 10 to look at some of her old TV show. But we don't get into the situation where a majority of white people, let's say-- And, of course, industry had passed her by, and the tapes were no longer viewable because they no longer had the kind of equipment to show them. You know, we're not going to take these arbitrary norms of-- I think it took away a part of her life that she wanted to relive. We're going to recognize this diversity of persons. Each is legitimately human and should-- in the total dialogue of society for the enrichment of all should be recognized... Gonna see a snowflake on top of Southern Hills.

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On "After 8" this morning, drugs, sex and rock and roll. They're the terms that defined the '60s. Problem is, some say our memories of that time often preserve the pleasure and forget the pain. To everything, turn, turn, turn Were the '60s a special time, or are they merely the obsession of the baby-boom generation, a generation that can't put their youth behind them? Bruce Elliott is president of the Anti-Nostalgia Association for the Advancement of Time, a group that believes America is too preoccupied with the past. In what sense, too preoccupied with the past? Well, in the sense that so much of contemporary culture is really devoted to regurgitating the past. So it starts to obscure our vision of the future. What do you think of what Bruce just said, that if we're preoccupied with that decade, we can't look ahead to the next one? Well, you know, it's on a continuum. You can understand the racism today when you see-- understand what happened with the civil-rights demonstration in the '60s. It's on a continuum.

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The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term, but, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you, we as a people will get there.

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Nothing ever in our lifetimes did we expect this to happen! Something big just happened. It feels like... it feels like anything is now possible.

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Yes, we can! Yes, we can! Yes, we can! Yes, we can!

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Mrs. Stokes was always a futuristic person. She was always looking into the future. She was absolutely determined that the next generation would be better.

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Richard would say, "Where would you like to go?" And she would look over at me, say, "Frank, where do you think we should go today?" Sometimes she would just want to go out and ride. And then she might just look out the window. And once she got her iPhone, she liked to take pictures. When we first got into the restaurant, she would always say, "Don't just order what you like. Order"-- And I'm not into, you know, ordering something I don't think I'm gonna like. And she's like, "Didn't you eat that already?" So she would want me to try something I didn't have. She told me, "Frank, if I'm like your mother, your mother yells at you, right?" So don't take it in a wrong way. It's just that I'm upset with you. She had a martini every day, Tanqueray martini, very dry, straight-up with a twist. If she didn't want to drink it all, we used to bring it home in a paper cup. I don't think a lot of people realize the real Marion, how she cared about people, was interested in everybody.

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You had to be sitting right next to her, holding her hand. And that's what made me notice she was a person, a giving and loving person.

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It came from me and Frank and Richard opening her up to that because it was, like, part of life she never saw... to have that connection with somebody that would just hold your hand and, you know, be there for you every day. Richard, the driver, Anna, the aide and myself, we were part of her family, I guess you would call it. I was quite pleased with that surrogate family. I've got a deep level of affection for those people, and that facilitated much more opening... and much more communication between, you know, my kids and their grandmother, and they developed a really, really sweet relationship. I remember my daughter saying to me, "I just can't imagine Gran getting angry." I'm like--

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It still makes me laugh. It's just-- And I told her, "I love that you've got that kind of relationship with her 'cause no one else on Earth does." It's really difficult to get resolution when somebody's turning a lot of emotions into anger. Do you know what? I'm not sure what I did wrong, but I need you to forgive me, and I forgive you, and we only got there within the last two months of her death.

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...share the same sentiment as Arizona, saying the federal government just isn't doing enough to secure our borders and fight the illegal-immigration problem here in America. I saw the most diverse-looking social movement. It was, like, almost 20 tapes a day we were taping. It was becoming harder and harder to find VHS tapes, and I used to go around the city scouring the stores. Well, who doesn't want to be able to predict the future? 30 years ago, who knew we'd have the Internet? One man did know. His name's Andy Gaspar. It just seemed to us that there was something new being born, something that was dramatically different that would change the way we communicate. It was newspapers back then that you thought sort of might be in danger. What do you think is sort of the next wave? Well, there are a few of them, and that is the role of a local TV station. We now have Fox News channel that's available on the Internet anytime you want it, 'cause you wonder, what is the role of Channel 5 news, any local TV station in that kind of environment? The aides would call me through the night sometimes and say, "Marion is not doing very well." When I came in, she was in her chair, but her head was almost on the ground. Like, she was bent in half. When I sat her up-- and I remember her eyes were open, and she looked at me, and she just patted my arm, and she said, "Frank... everything's gonna be all right." So... I sort of felt that, as she would say, the guardian angels were...

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Taking her home. And so I got over there relatively quickly. You know, she was sitting up. They'd propped her up. And she was just looking very, very peaceful, but on the news, and, you know, we kind of left the news running because we didn't know if she'd wake up and, like, blow up that we'd turned it off. So we just kind of left it on. And there was this horrific story unfolding. We are now multiple hours into this horrific, horrific crime that has happened in this small sleepy New England town of Newtown, Connecticut, at this elementary school. The call came into 911

right around 9

30 this morning. A gunman walked in this school. The latest number we have, and again...

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-

exhales deeply

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That would've been a rough day anyway.

breathes deeply

right around 9

That would've been a rough day anyway. Again, we're hearing closer to 30 killed at the school. As far as children, little children-- keep in mind, the school is kindergarten through fourth grade-- somewhere between 18... And my mom's breathing was getting shallower and shallower, and her hands were getting colder. I said, "You know, it looks like your ride is here"... you know?

exhales deeply

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voice breaking

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And she went.

sniffles

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And then we turned off the VCRs, turned off the TV. It was kind of scary in the apartment without all that noise.

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It's kind of like you only knew she was dead when you turned the VCRs off. When I discovered that I was a coexecutor of the will, I didn't realize that she had basically trusted me with finding the right home for it, that she really did value my capabilities and value my perspective. It's changed my view of our relationship. Michael said that, "This is my mother's whole life. "It would be like throwing her life away if I didn't do something with them." It was really a full-time job for a year and a half. Donated a lot of books to a charity that uses secondhand books to teach at-risk youth. Got rid of the Apple computers. But no one would take the tapes... no one. So we decided to take all the tapes and put them in a POD. They were, like, 16 foot long, 8 foot high and 8 foot wide. And put them in storage until something could be worked out. We were very afraid, "Nobody wants these, and they'll all just be thrown in the trash."

rattling

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And let me just put this out there. This story just hits home with us newsies, us news junkies. Every news broadcast for 35 years is about to be preserved for posterity. 35 years, and for that, we have this woman to thank-- the late Marion Stokes. Marion Stokes hit record way back in 1977. She didn't stop until December of 2012, all of that history arriving today by truck at an archive in San Francisco from Stokes' home. With me now from Philadelphia is Marion Stokes' son, Mike Metelits, and we are also joined by Roger Macdonald of the Internet Archive in San Francisco. But first, Roger, to you. Tell me, how rare is this collection from Marion Stokes? It's an exceptional collection, really an unprecedented collection, and... I first heard of Marion Stokes from an email from Michael. I was just amazed that somebody had actually done this at this size, the magnitude of it. And he took the stuff. We shipped it across the country-- couple of trucks-- and a huge load was lifted from my shoulders, and it's just been staggering, staggering relief. We just felt like, you know, a miracle had happened, that someone was willing to take them and to, you know, make them accessible to the public.

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They arrived in our warehouse in Richmond in truck after truck. I think the scale of Marion Stokes' collection is absolutely impressive. I mean... nobody in this field has ever heard or seen the like. What she recorded is inaccessible to us... all the long-form programming that she got, all the CNN, all the Fox, and then there's the local news. That's a rare collection. There are probably elements that she has that nobody has. She understood the power of media to shape public opinion, and when-- One of my mother's dreams was that that would be available to people. As an only child, you know, just to be able to take my mother's life's work and to be able to participate in someone making it available to people, that's... that's just enormously gratifying. Our intention and goal is to digitize them, put everything that she has on our servers to hold on to it for future generations and make it available. What we're offering is to search television by key word. When we sent them the test box, they immediately began to realize that the early days of my mother's taping were also the early days of closed captioning. They can use the closed captioning as a tag that lets people know and search what's happening in the actual videotape. The Internet Archive is able to make these tapes accessible in a much more technology-savvy way. Now there's so much media, more than ever, people need access to reliable information to make their decisions, and that was very much what my mother would've wanted to do. Decades' worth of television broadcasts is irretrievably lost. An archive redeems the object of its collecting from the trash can of history. Effectively, you will only know afterwards what is important to have collected, so the more you have, the more you can then go back and say, "Hmm, this is actually important." Aah! All archives create futures.

indistinct chatter

right around 9

When looking at the underlying instincts that drives collection and preservation, there is this human drive to transcend time... not willing to let go of any moment and the realization that the past is never let go. The fact that she kept all this stuff, when other people caught up that they wanted to save it 20 years after she started, that's smart. She had an incredible ability to see trends and to act on them. It's difficult not to call her a visionary, really difficult to pull that tag away from her. She was very, very much ahead of her time. She did give up a lot in terms of what, you know, people think of as kind of normal human life, but she funneled all that energy into doing things that she felt were important to her, that were gonna be important in the long run. It was hard for me and the family... but I loved her.