Ben Affleck Ashamed To Mention Slave-Owning Relative In Documentary; Pressured PBS To Edit It
Ben Affleck released an official statement on Facebook this week regarding a leaked email urging filmmakers behind PBS's Finding Your Roots to exclude information about a distant relative who owns slaves.
"After an exhaustive search of my ancestry for "Finding Your Roots," it was discovered that one of my distant relatives was an owner of slaves. I didn't want any television show about my family to include a guy who owned slaves."
" I was embarrassed. The very thought left a bad taste in my mouth," the Batman actor said in a statement mentioned by Deadline.
The statement is said to be a response to earlier rumor spread by WikiLeaks saying that part of Sony's hacked documents is Ben's email urging producers to edit that particular aspect in his ancestry.
The 42-year old actor continued saying that he is entitled to his privacy and his personal preference to voluntarily to make his personal information public as the program is not a news program.
"It's important to remember that this isn't a news program. Finding Your Roots is a show where you voluntarily provide a great deal of information about your family, making you quite vulnerable. The assumption is that they will never be dishonest but they will respect your willingness to participate and not look to include things you think would embarrass your family."
The episode is said to have been aired in October last year.
A PBS spokesperson said that the TV station as well as the producers of the show have already responded to the actor's concern and have conducted an internal review about it, Gawker said.
"In order to gather the facts to determine whether or not all of PBS' editorial standards were observed, on Saturday, April 18th, we began an internal review. We have been moving forward deliberately yet swiftly to conduct this review," the statement goes.
Meanwhile, WikiLeaks further exposed an email exchange between the show's host, Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr and producer Michael Lynton with Gates asking advice from the producer, CBC News said.
In an email, dated July 22, 2014, Gates said: "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. Now, four or five of our guests this season descend from slave owners, including (prolific documentary filmmaker) Ken Burns. We've never had anyone ever try to censor or edit what we found. He's a megastar. What do we do?"
On Saturday, PBS denied that such exchanges happened.
