The Sony hacks have struck again, and Ben Affleck has found himself in the hot seat this time around.
Wikileaks has organized the leaked emails and documents released in the Sony hack late last year, and it found an email that shows that Affleck asked the producers of PBS's "Finding Your Roots" to hide the details of his slave-owning ancestor.
Host and Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates questioned such censorship but didn't want to upset such a "megastar" so he asked Sony Pictures co-chairman and chief executive Michael Lynton for advice on the matter.
"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 Ken Burns. We've never had anyone ever try to censor or edit what we found. He's a megastar. What do we do?" Gates wrote on July 22, 2014.
Lynton responded, "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. Again, all things being equal I would definitely take it out."
The two men never refer to Affleck by name but only as a "megastar" and "Batman." The Oscar-winner was filming "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" in Detroit at the time and Gates offered to go visit him on set to discuss the details.
Gates and Lynton seemed to agree that censorship is a bad idea, even though the show ultimately went that route.
"It would embarrass him and compromise our integrity. I think he is getting very bad advice," Gates said. He then wrote in a later email, "Once we open the door to censorship, we lose control of the brand."
Once Wikileaks uncovered the email, Gates responded that the show accumulates so much information on its guests that it can't all be used. The season that Affleck's episode aired, the show had already featured two guests, Ken Burns and Anderson Cooper, who also had slave owners in their family history.
"We decided to go with the story we used about his fascinating ancestor who became on occultist following the Civil War. This guy's story was totally unusual: we had never discovered someone like him before," Gates told The Associated Press.
The Affleck episode also spotlighted his mother who was a "freedom rider" in 1964.
The 42-year-old actor has done substantial humanitarian work in the Eastern Congo of Africa. The People's Choice Awards recently honored him with the Favorite Humanitarian Award.
