Yahoo News Wikileaks: Sony Cut Affleck Ancestor Slave Link
Ben Affleck asked documentary makers not to reveal he had a slave-owning ancestor, according to emails published online by whistleblower site Wikileaks.
The actor featured in an episode of the PBS series Finding Your Roots, which eventually chose not to use the information in question.
Affleck's alleged request came to light in an email exchange apparently between the broadcasters and the show's host, Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates.
The communications, purportedly between Mr Gates and Sony Pictures chief executive Michael Lynton, were among hundreds of thousands of emails and documents from last year's Sony hack that Wikileaks put into a searchable online archive .
In the alleged email exchange, Mr Gates asks Mr Lynton for advice on how to handle the request from Affleck, who is known for his support for liberal causes .
Mr Gates apparently wrote on 22 July last year: "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?"
Wikileaks says Mr Lynton initially replied that it all depended on who knew the information was in the documentary already.
"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."
After further exchanges, the two seem to decide censoring the information is a bad idea.
Mr Gates apparently wrote on 22 July that if the public learned of it, "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."
The network and Mr Gates appear to insist in separate statements that they did not censor the slave-owner details.
An email apparently from Mr Gates said finding slave-owning ancestors was very common in the series, and noted Ken Burns and Anderson Cooper as two guests with slave-owner relatives.
"For any guest, we always find far more stories about ancestors on their family trees than we ever possibly could use."
In Affleck's case, the emails state, "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."
