Downloaded from YTS.MX
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
♪
And at five dollars a barrel less--
Water was ten feet--
- First ball-- - But if we take away--
Lead is--
Down on the process--
Grab a look a man who left--
In a Caribbean jet liner--
- A gay man was shot to death. - Towels for a dollar--
Our headquarters overseas.
At seventy-two seconds following liftoff,
the tragic explosion.
The Challenger was engulfed in flames.
♪
In Iran, the war is a holy crusade
promoted on television with Marshall Music and--
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.
We do expect it to tighten as more and more adult 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 in making life better, making my life better,
and making life for other people better.
Now, if it is useful,
if it's a useful correlation,
a way of looking at things, if it--
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.
♪
I was Mrs. Stokes' chauffeur in Philadelphia.
She lived in the richest part of the city.
The square itself is 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.
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.
We were getting close to finishing their place
when they said they would like me to start working for them,
helping them do things.
I was kind of shocked because of, 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,
Mrs. 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.
♪
I do have a memory of demonstrations,
one which garnered quite a kind of hostile response.
There were, there were some postcards sent--
sent to my mother saying, you know, well,
if you don't like it here, go, 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, 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 I saw him less and less.
♪
Captain's log Stardate 5784.2.
We are responding to desperate distress calls
- from an unknown planet. - 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 multi-racial,
multi-national 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.
♪
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 goin'?
Where am I goin', where else can I go?
I'm goin' over here and sit down.
I do what I usually do, look at TV.
Well, why would you look at TV when it ain't workin'?
Science documentaries.
- Snakes, lizards have-- - With existence, CIA-
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 to 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 understated in tone.
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 that--
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 erratic.
♪ Walkin' 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, uh,
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.
And 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.
♪
From ABC in New York, this is World News Tonight,
Sunday, with Sam Donaldson.
Good evening. The U.S. 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.
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.
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 U.S. Embassy in Tehran.
Officials will continue their search for some way
to negotiate the hostages' freedom.
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.
You know, 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.
Series of attempts to negotiate the release.
She was saying, "Well, we've 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 have 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
stormed the Soviet Embassy in Tehran.
But this time, Khomeini's revolutionary guards
evict the protestors.
That same day, U.N. Secretary General Waldheim
arrives in Tehran to negotiate the release of the hostages.
She was kind of watching
these positions and maneuverings,
public opinion being molded.
Kind of uniformly anti-Iran, people were calling for 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 U.S.
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.
During that crisis, she hit record and she never stopped.
The Iran Crisis.
America Held Hostage.
America Held Hostage aired first for fifteen minutes,
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.
Iranian health representatives--
The idea of a news show at 11:30 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 sub events.
There has been a startling new development
in the Iran hostage crisis.
That U.S. attempt to launch a military rescue
of the American hostages in Tehran has been,
as you have now heard several times, aborted.
Eight U.S. 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.
We have a report, Barbara, excuse me,
I am just told that the Associated Press reports
that the hostages are leaving the airport.
Now we can't go any further than that on that report,
but it comes to us from Associated Press.
I don't know whether it's filed--
it must be filed from Tehran, and, uh,
they say that the hostages are leaving the airport.
Imagine that, we are within half an hour
- of the transition of power. - I'd like to hear
from Ted Koppel before the President-elect comes out.
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 of 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.
- Freed. - We've had press report.
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, she really,
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's gonna keep everything."
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.
♪
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 is ended, what happened?"
You know, so it was a 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 were to stop.
You said it was on Thursday night.
- You taped the wrong show. - Take control of your TV.
There is 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 Elián González
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, at Rittenhouse Camera,
to send the tapes in black trash bags.
♪
I guess she felt insecure in a way that people were
talkin' 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 Liz 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 seven hundred 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.
- 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 below ground 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. - Beaufort, 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.
They send us their cars, their VCRs,
and just about everything else.
Their success makes them money, not necessarily friends.
The Japanese have a big public relations problem
in America and big problems
require big solutions.
Big, how's this for big?
Japan's newest export, Sumo wrestlers.
The Japanese have just sent America several tons of sumos,
a good will tour to improve Japan's image in this country
and just possibly to take our minds off the trade deficit.
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 six 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, 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, uh,
what I am attempting to, uh, 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, uh, spirit of affirmation,
even if the affirmation's only coming, let's say, one way,
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 that 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 '60ts 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 are we gonna change the structure?
This phoniness, this, 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.
And 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, with--
With my ideas or with the situation,
the reality of the situation.
Not, not my credentials
that I use the 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, uh, uh,
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-- - I think we can't deal with it.
Well, I don't accept that totally in that--
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, 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. - See, I'm with you.
It's your process, make it work.
See, I'm with you, all of us together.
Not I make it work, but will you join me?
- No, you make it work. - Will you join me?
You keep me out of your institutions,
- therefore you--no, you have... - I should keep you out?
...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 and reason together...
- Make your process work first. - ...as Johnson always says.
- 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.
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.
♪
I'm trying to make a positive input in society
instead of hanging on some set of norms that are prevailing.
What is the key to building
a type of way of communicating and working together so we--
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."
- Well justified. - One said, John, uh--
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 that 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.
Um, "How long is this for?"
And he said, "Well, um, I'm not really sure."
♪
I was able to get horoscopes of two people who I knew
who, uh, 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--
even I'm gonna get it
and, uh, I think I got it.
I guess you could call it the pre-marriage honeymoon.
♪
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 gonna have to heat
the house with gas from the stove anymore.
♪
I certainly looked on him, you know,
as a bit of a role model.
♪
They were married in New Hope, Pennsylvania,
two days after I turned thirteen.
♪
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.
♪
Turn on the machine,
pour in almost all the water, and then go,
pump, pump, pump.
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, relax-- - But I didn't have any sense of
- it being a specific project. - NBC News Team.
Experience you can trust.
This is CBS.
Each evening, Monday through Friday on--
This is CBS.
Twenty-four hour feeds were CNN, FOX, MSNBC.
Then I would put in an eight-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.
♪
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's strike is into its fourth day.
Yes, despite all kinds of traffic jams--
- Somebody do something! - New Yorkers have not allowed
the strike to change their usual disposition.
- This air stinks. - It stinks.
Don't bother me, why don't you do something constructive?
It's been two years since the Soviets invaded Afghanistan,
and today a State Department report said the Soviets
seemed bogged down in a Vietnam-like no-win 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 ♪
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.
Sixty-nine-year-old Julia Wilder,
President of the Pickens Voters League
and fifty-one-year-old Maggie Bozeman,
President of a local NAACP.
I would not have been trying to help people
had they been able to do it for themselves,
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 from log cabin to White House
and what's wrong with the journey from peanut planter
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 electoral
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.
♪
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.
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.
They shall talk themselves to death,
and we will bury them with their own confusion.
We shall prevail.
On January 24th, Apple Computer
will introduce Macintosh.
And you'll see why 1984
won't be like "1984".
♪
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 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.
- We don't want to be-- - 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 an 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 twenty percent 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, discreet holding,
and it went up significantly.
It definitely increased both the family wealth
and her personal wealth.
"Here's to the crazy ones,
the misfits, the rebels, troublemakers,
the round pegs in the square holes,
the ones who see things differently."
She was very much into Steve Jobs.
Mike will often joke that Steve was her--
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 be incredibly hard on people.
And Steve Jobs' story of being adopted,
those things really resonated with my mother.
♪
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 family should behave with each other.
Three, two, one, and lift off!
Lift off, 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 step-mother."
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
that 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 reexamination of what is normal is,
is in order at this point,
because what's normal is gonna be what we've, uh,
- been taught or accepted. - 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.
♪
My mother was, as someone who would 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.
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, um, really could--
could quite be very cruel if she thought you weren't
kind of intellectually up to the--up to her standard.
It was kind of like a two-day argument going on
and 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,
uh, 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 U.S. Attorney
let alone a United States 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, uh,
about a commie organization or something,
I may have said something like that.
♪ Made in the U.S.A. ♪
Let's start the "Family Feud" the winner takes all.
Thank you!
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.
If you feel 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...
Live from Iraq with scouts in the Seven-Six infantry--
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 being pursued?
What story isn't being covered?
♪
Make us a part of your party.
It is now 1992 Happy New Year!
Curfew is in effect as Los Angeles continues to reel
from violence in the aftermath of the Rodney King verdicts.
South Central part of the city looked like
- the burning Kuwaiti oil field. - One footnote to all of this,
the final episode of the Cosby Show
aired tonight in Los Angeles.
For eight years, the program held up an ideal of a happy,
successful black American family.
♪ And 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 rule--
We're leaving this program to bring you live coverage
of President Clinton's comments on 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 fifteen minutes
of actual talking and the rest of it was just silence.
♪
That is the lunar eclipse from last night.
As this century ends, um, we have seen
our last lunar eclipse of the 1900s.
In Times Square, eyes are up there on the ball.
♪
Happy New Year!
♪
I don't remember how long it had been since I had contact,
but it was a long time because
they would not answer the phone.
Marion wouldn't or couldn't, maybe.
At 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."
♪
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 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've considered him something of a wimp.
♪
I mean, I have a clear visual memory
of him walking,
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 that 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 soulmates.
I think at that point in her life she had ousted 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 that 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--
- Number 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.
We can see these pictures, it's obviously, uh,
something devastating has happened, and, again,
unconfirmed report 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, uh, Sean Murtagh, I just was, uh, standing
on the, uh, vice president of finance,
the vice president of finance for CNN--
If every Capitol Hill scandal merits weeks of coverage,
how much attention do
two-and-a-half million dead merit?
It's a story we should have 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.
Three years, two-and-a-half 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, uh, it was a jet, uh, it looked like--
We want 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.
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 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--
These are of course, the two twin Trade Center buildings
that are down at the foot of Manhattan.
That 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, we're going to go to
a Special Report now from ABC News.
Any debris that has hit down there, or can you see any--
My vantage point is too far from the World Trade Center
to make any, uh, determination of that.
Do you see any smoke, any flames coming out
of the engines of that plane?
This is an ABC News Special Report.
Was, uh, coming in low and the--
The entire ABC Network, Good Morning America
was in progress, East Coast and the Midwest,
we will be joined by the entire network
just to show you some pictures of the--
I can see flames now coming out the side of the building and--
It's 8:52 here in New York, I'm Bryant Gumbel.
We understand that there has been a plane crash on the,
uh, southern tip of Manhattan.
Live from New York City, apparently a plane
has crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.
8:52, we have limited information at this point.
We don't know about injuries,
uh, in the building or people on the ground,
- but obviously, this has... - There.
It does not appear that there's any kind of a--
an effort up there yet, now remember--
- Oh, my God! - Oh God!
Oh my God.
I can hear you.
The rest of the world hears you, and the people--
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, "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.
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, um, her family.
She collected between forty and fifty thousand 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 'em 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.
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. - And she would buy stuff.
And I would say, "Marion, where do you want me to put it?"
And she would say, "Make room."
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's one of our viewers.
This one I love,
and as soon as I get some place 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 it--
they think it's a pile of junk, then this person's a hoarder.
If they think, "Oh my God, no one's 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.
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
and for history, for prosperity.
We know who shot Trayvon.
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.
I don't know what his deal is.
- Are you following him? - Yeah.
Okay, we don't need you to do that.
She wanted to, like, compare
the way the news is put out there
and how we, as a community takes it in.
We are going to demand equal justice under the law.
We are going to declare poor people's independence
- in this country. - That's all right.
Let the world pray, but it'll be sorry.
A black insurance man whose slaying
fell in the hands of policemen
gave new fervor to their outcries
against police brutality.
We want them to keep seeing it, if they keep seeing it,
they might do something about it so it don't happen again.
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's 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, uh,
your, uh, 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, uh, gave her bodily injury,
and she was as white as the driven snow.
♪
Bill, I made an embarrassing mistake.
The woman who was manhandled in South Carolina was not white.
She was black, I saw the things 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.
But see, but that is the sort of race baiting.
This is-- there are two police officers--
- That happens to be true. - There were five people here.
Five police officers, two of them were African American.
We went into a little bit of history's web of violence.
And I just wonder and 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,
uh, 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 uh, 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, uh,
more peaceful and cooperative type of society?
♪
I remember Marion calling me like three
or four o'clock 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 Ten
to look at some of her old TV show.
If we don't get into the situation
where a majority of white people...
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 gonna take these arbitrary norms--
I think it took away a part of her life
that she wanted to relive.
We're gonna 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...
I see a snowflake on top of Seven Hills.
♪
One after eight this morning, drugs, sex, and rock 'n roll.
They're the terms that define the '60s.
The problem is some say our memories of that time
often preserve the pleasure and forget the pain.
♪ Everything, turn, turn, turn ♪
Were the '60s a special time or are they merely
the obsession of the Baby Boom generation,
the 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, uh, it's on a continuum.
♪
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.
Nothing ever in our lifetimes did we expect this to happen.
I--something big just happened.
It feels like, um, it feels like anything is now possible.
Yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can!
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.
♪
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, "Did 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.
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.
♪
It came from me and Frank and Richard
opening her up to that,
because it was like a part of life she never saw.
To have that connection with somebody to 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, you know, just-- it still makes me laugh.
It's just, it's hilar-- I told her,
"I love that you've got that kind of relationship
with her, because 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.
You know, we need a system that--
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?
Thirty 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 any time you want it.
You wonder, what is the role of Channel Five News,
any local TV station in that kind of environment.
♪
The aides would call me through the night sometimes and say,
"Marion's 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...
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 just 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, uh, 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 in
to 911 right around 9:30 this morning.
A gunman walked in this school.
The latest number we have...
♪
That would have been a rough day anyway.
♪
That would have 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, this school is kindergarten
through fourth grade, somewhere in-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's here, you know?"
♪
And she went.
♪
And then we turned off the VCRs,
turned off the TV.
It was kind of scary in the apartment
without all that noise.
♪
It was kind of like you only knew she was dead
when you turned the VCRs off.
♪
When I discovered that I was a co-executor of the will,
and then realizing that she had basically trusted me with
finding the right home for it.
She really did value my capabilities
and valued 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 whole life away
if I didn't do something with them."
It was really a full-time job for a year and a half.
I donated a lot of books to a charity that uses
second-hand books to teach at-risk youths.
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 'em in a pod.
They were like 16 foot long,
8 foot high, and 8 foot wide,
and put 'em 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.
♪
Well, 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.
Thirty-five 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.
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,
a couple, a couple of trucks, and a huge load
was lifted from my shoulders,
and it's just been a staggering, staggering, uh, relief.
That we just felt like, you know,
a miracle had happened that someone was willing
to take them in to, you know,
make them accessible to the public.
♪
They arrived in our warehouse in Richmond
in truck after truck.
I think the scale of Marion Stokes' collection
is absolutely unprecedented.
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 onto it for future generations
and make it available.
What we're offering is to search television by keyword.
♪
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 have 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, "Hm, this is actually important."
♪
All archives create futures.
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 call 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 a 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.
♪