Star lobbied for omitting details about his ancestors who owned slaves.
By Raif Karerat
PBS announced it will postpone an upcoming season of the television program “Finding Your Roots” after it was revealed that Ben Affleck pressured producers into omitting details about one of his ancestors who owned slaves.
According to Family History Insider, Benjamin Cole, a great-great-great grandparent on the Affleck’s mother’s side, was a sheriff in Chatham County, Ga., in the 1850s and ’60s who was the “trustee” of seven slaves.
After an internal investigation, PBS stated producers violated network standards by letting the director/screenwriter/director/activist have “improper influence” and “by failing to inform PBS or WNET of Mr. Affleck’s efforts to affect program content.”
The network will not run the show’s third season until staffing changes are made, including hiring a fact checker, reported the New York Times.
Affleck said in April that he was “embarrassed” when he discovered that he was related to a slave owner. “I didn’t want any television show about my family to include a guy who owned slaves,” Affleck wrote on Facebook.
He requested the show’s producers to leave Cole out of the final cut of the program, to which they agreed after a measure of debate. When Affleck’s episode was broadcast in October, it contained no mention of Cole or Affleck’s Georgia relatives.
However, in April, hacked emails emerged on WikiLeaks between executive producer Henry Louis Gates Jr. — who is also a Harvard historian — and a Sony boss who questioned what their course of action should be in regards to Affleck’s demands.
“We’ve never had anyone ever try to censor or edit what we found,” Gates wrote. “He’s a megastar. What do we do?”
Per the Washington Post:
… Affleck’s story is a case study in the cover-up being worse than the crime. Plenty of other “Finding Your Roots” participants have found things they perhaps wished they hadn’t. Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter got his name from a slave-owner who likely raped his distant great-grandmother. Anderson Cooper’s ancestor was beaten to death by a rebellious slave. But Jeter doesn’t seem to have lost fans over the matter, and people are still watching CNN. Had his slave-holding ancestry been revealed in his episode, Affleck would have been fine in the eyes of the public.
Instead, the actor has been endlessly harangued online, especially by conservatives who have seized the moment and turned their ire towards the Democratic Party, of which Affleck is a staunch supporter.
“PBS America and Affleck show us that although Republicans aren’t perfect, at least they’re FAR more honest about their true opinions and intentions than lying Democrat HYPOCRITES like him — who perpetually attempt to hide the real truth, purely to suit their deceitful, self-serving agenda,” one person wrote regarding a YouTube clip — excerpted from the show — that focused on Affleck’s mother, who was a civil rights activist.