Hollywood star Ben Affleck asked television chiefs at PBS to hide the fact that one of his ancestors was a slave owner, according to a newly published batch of hacked emails involving the media giant Sony.
The Oscar-winning director and actor, star of the forthcoming movie blockbuster Batman v Superman, asked producers of the public television show Finding Your Roots to leave some details out of the story of his heritage, as revealed through a fresh batch of emails from the Sony hack that have been published by WikiLeaks.
The host of the show, Henry Louis Gates, a prominent Harvard University history professor, appeared upset by the apparently unprecedented request but the sensitive facts were nonetheless left out of the show, which aired last September.
Details of the Email Exchange
In the leaked messages, Gates asked Sony Pictures co-chair Michael Lynton how he should handle Affleck’s request.
“Here’s my dilemma. Confidentially, for the first time, one of our guests has asked us to edit out something about one of his ancestors – the fact that he owned slaves. We’ve never had anyone ever try to censor or edit what we found. He’s a megastar. What do we do?” Gates wrote.
Lynton agreed that the situation was difficult and came down to editorial integrity. Gates replied, “It would embarrass him and compromise our integrity. I think he is getting very bad advice. Once we open the door to censorship, we lose control of the brand.” Affleck’s name is not mentioned in the email exchange but the actor is referred to as “Batman” and “a megastar.”
The episode on Affleck focused on the actor’s mom, who was a “freedom rider” in the 1960s, but there was no mention about the ancestor who owned slaves. PBS posted a statement on its website saying: “It is clear from the exchange how seriously Professor Gates takes editorial integrity.”
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