The woman who recorded

Marion Stokes spent more than thirty years recording television news because she feared that truth could one day be altered or erased. Long before the phrase “fake news” became common, she quietly documented broadcasts around the clock, believing original records would someday matter deeply.

Rather than becoming a public activist or media critic, Stokes focused on preservation. She recorded political debates, breaking news, disasters, and ordinary broadcasts, creating a massive archive of unedited television history.

Her interest in media developed through her background in civil rights activism and social justice work. Over time, she noticed how news stories were framed differently, repeated selectively, or sometimes disappeared from attention entirely.

To capture everything accurately, Stokes transformed her home into a recording center filled with televisions, VHS machines, and thousands of tapes. She constantly upgraded equipment to keep recordings uninterrupted and reliable.

By the end of her life, she had collected more than 71,000 VHS tapes. Unlike traditional archives that save only major events, her collection preserved complete broadcasts, allowing historians to study not just events, but also how they were presented to the public.

After Stokes died in 2012, the Internet Archive stepped in to digitize and organize the enormous collection. The process required years of work, but it turned her private project into a valuable public resource for researchers, journalists, and historians.

Today, Stokes’ archive serves as a powerful reminder of the importance of preserving original information. In an era of edited clips, social media, and shifting narratives, her recordings offer a way to revisit history exactly as audiences first experienced it.