PBS has suspended the series "Finding Your Roots" after the network found out producers omitted details of Ben Affleck's slave-owning ancestry.
An internal review found the show's co-producers violated PBS standards "by failing to shield the creative and editorial process from improper influence," according to PBS. The network will postpone the third season and wait to commit to a fourth season until it's satisfied the show has raised its editorial standards.
In April, Wikileaks exposed the emails sent between "Finding Your Roots" host and Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton that referenced Affleck's request to omit the fact that his great-great-great-grandfather owned 24 slaves.
"The big question is who knows that the material is in the doc and is being taken out. I would take it out if no one knows, but if it gets out that you are editing the material based on this kind of sensitivity then it gets tricky," Lynton told Gates in one email. "Again, all things being equal I would definitely take it out."
Gates later wrote back, "Once we open the door to censorship, we lose control of the brand."
PBS and WNET, the New York station that produced the first two seasons, claim these reports were the first time they heard about the request. They then opened an investigation headed by the executives who oversee primetime programming for PBS and WNET.
The second season had already featured Ken Burns and Anderson Cooper, who also had slave owners in their family history. Affleck's episode instead chose to focus on an ancestor who became an occultist following the Civil War and his mother's own work as a "freedom rider" in 1964.
In January, WETA, the PBS station in Washington D.C., took over production of the series from WNET.
